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THE LAJSTD OF NOME 



THE 

LAND OF NOME 

A NAERATIVE SKETCH OF THE 
RUSH TO OUR BERING SEA GOLD- 
FIELDS, THE COUNTRY, ITS MINES 
AND ITS PEOPLE, AND THE HIS- 
TORY OF A GREAT CONSPIRACY 

1900-1901 

BY 

LANTIEE McKEE 




THE GRAFTON PRESS 
NEW YORK 



THE LIBRARY OF 
©GNGRESS, 

Two COHM fSECEIVB* 

WAR 26 "1902 

CLASS Ct^XXo. No, 



Copyright, 1902, by 
The Geafton Press 



-^ 



^o 



-^ 



PEEFACE 

A FTER returning from his first ex- 
JLjL perience in Alaska in 1900, the 
author was prompted to write from his 
diary, primarily for his friends, a sketch 
of the rush to the Cape Nome gold-fields 
and the character of the country and its 
people. This account, with some modifi- 
cations, forms the first half of this book. 
The second half, parts of which were 
written in the atmosphere of the situations 
as they arose during the following year, 
has been recently completed upon the ad- 
judication of the United States Circuit 
Court of Appeals for the Pacific Coast, 
which, in effect, finally frees north- 
western Alaska from one of the most 



PKEFACE 

dramatic and oppressive conspiracies in 
recent history. 

The writer believes that the discovery 
of this El Dorado of Bering Sea has 
created an epoch in the development of 
our national domain, wonderful and un- 
precedented in various phases, and but 
little understood or appreciated by the 
general public. Because of its unique- 
ness, it is a difficult matter to treat ade- 
quately. Certain features of the sub- 
ject can hardly be exaggerated; for in- 
stance: the magnitude and blindness of 
the stampede of eighteen thousand for- 
tune-hunters in the summer of 1900, and 
the almost indescribable scenes which 
attended their arrival on the " golden 
sands"; the marvelous richness of some 
of the placer-gold deposits; the dreari- 
ness and barrenness of the new country; 
vi 



PREFACE 

and the enormity of the judicial conspir- 
acy, whose proceedings the United States 
Circuit Court of Appeals has declared 
"have no parallel in the jurisprudence of 
this country." 

Special laws concerning Alaska, the 
local methods of mining, and various 
other matters pertaining to the country 
and its people, are dealt with herein, 
probably with sufficient fullness for the 
general reader. The book, however, as 
a whole, is in narrative form; and per- 
sonal experiences and character-sketches 
(especially in the second part) have been 
freely utilized for the purpose of illus- 
trating characteristic conditions and typi- 
cal people. 

If the narrative in places seems too 
personal, this, perhaps, will be pardoned, 
for the reason that an account of the 
vii 



PREFACE 

actual experiences of a few individuals — 
tame, indeed, compared with those of 
many others — may better suggest the 
atmosphere of a weird land than a mere 
resume of impersonal facts. Finally, it 
is hoped that this book may, in some small 
measure, prove of service in directing at- 
tention to the past neglect and present 
needs of our wonderful Alaska. 

L. McK. 

New York, February, 1902. 



Vlll 



CONTENTS 

OHAPTEB PAGB 

I The Rush in 1900 1 

II The Hybrid City of Nome ... 30 

III Travel to the Interior .... 54 

IV The Inland Country — The Mines 76 

V McKenzie at Work— The Storm— 
The United States Court of Ap- 
peals 105 

VI The Dangers of Bering Sea — A 
Dismal Outlook ....... 137 

VII Up the Streams— An Evening at 

Johnson's Camp 166 

VIII The Council City Mining District 

—Joe Ripley and Others . . 187 

IX The Operetta at Dexter's— Nome 

City of To-day 230 

X The End of the Conspiracy— A 
Word for Alaska 246 

ix 



PART I 

1900 




THE RUSH IN 1900 

'HE remarkable discoveries of 
gold at Cape Nome, Alaska, 
situated almost in the Bering 
Strait, only one hundred and 
fifty miles from Siberia, and distant not 
less than three thousand miles from San 
Francisco and fifteen hundred from the 
famed Klondike, naturally created more 
excitement in the Western and mining 
sections of this country than in the Middle 
States and the " effete East," an expres- 
sion frequently heard in the West. These 
rich placer-gold deposits were discovered 
by a small party of prospectors in the late 
1 



THE LAND OF NOME 

autumn of 1898. The news spread like 
wild-fire down along the Pacific coast and 
up into Dawson and the Klondike country, 
and the following spring witnessed a 
stampede to the new El Dorado, which, 
however, was wholly eclipsed by the un- 
precedented mad rush of eighteen thou- 
sand persons in the spring ensuing. Dur- 
ing the summer months of 1899, when, 
in addition to the gold along the creeks, 
rich deposits, easy to extract, were found 
in the beach extending for miles by the 
sea, every one at Nome had an opportu- 
nity to share in nature's unexpected gift. 
Consequently, upon the return in the fall, 
the story of the wonderful wealth of this 
weird country was circulated broadcast. 
All kinds of schemes, honest and dishon- 
est, were devised during the winter to 
obtain the gold the following season, and 
2 



THE RUSH m 1900 

the matter of providing suitable laws to 
meet the many difficult conditions and 
questions which had already arisen, and 
which would be greatly aggravated by 
the threatened and succeeding stampede, 
came definitely before Congress. Alaska, 
legally, is not even a Territory, though 
commonly so called. It is the District of 
Alaska, possessing a governor and other 
officers, but, unlike a Territory, no leg- 
islature; and it is, therefore, entirely de- 
pendent upon Congress for all legislation. 
The Alaska bill, under the charge of Mr. 
Warner in the House and Senator Carter 
in the Senate, consumed a great deal of 
the time of Congress; many of its provi- 
sions were hotly debated, and finally it be- 
came a law, June 6, 1900 — in the main a 
satisfactory piece of legislation. By it 
Alaska was divided into three judicial 
3 



THE LAND OF NOME 

divisions, and that which embraces north- 
western Alaska and the new gold-fields 
was allotted to Arthur H. Noyes of Min- 
nesota, formerly of Dakota. If ever a 
position demanded an honest, able, and 
fearless man, it was this judgeship, which 
should be the guaranty of good civil gov- 
ernment, establish a court, and disentangle 
and dispose of, among a mixed population 
largely composed of unscrupulous ele- 
ments, an indescribable mass of legal 
matters, already accumulated and ever 
increasing. 

When in Washington in the winter of 
1899, 1 became interested in Cape Nome. 
I met there an able young attorney from 
the Pacific coast, who among the first 
had gone to Nome, where he had prac- 
tised his profession with great success 
and secured interests in some promising 



THE RUSH IN 1900 

properties. He was then in Washington 
in the interest of Alaskan legislation. 
The prospects for great legal complica- 
tions in the new country were highly 
encouraging. Lieutenant Jarvis of the 
United States revenue service, a man of 
sound judgment and few words, who so 
signally distinguished himself in 1897 by 
his overland expedition and rescue of the 
crews of whaling-vessels ice-bound in the 
Arctic seas, had been the chief agent of 
the government at ]S"ome the preceding 
year. He not only corroborated what I 
had already heard, but gave the impres- 
sion that the story had not half been told. 
My brother and I decided to make the 
venture, and to be content with a safe 
return and a fund of experience, to offset 
the uncertain rewards of business and 
law practice during the dull summer 
5 



THE LAND OF NOME 

months. He took up surveying, and I 
spent all my spare time in studying the 
elaborate codes of laws which Congress 
was then enacting for Alaska, as well as 
substantive mining law and all available 
information pertaining to that little known 
or understood country. 

In San Francisco there were many 
signs of the Nome excitement. "Cape 
!N^ome Supplies," in large print, met the 
eye frequently. One ran across many 
who were going, and heard of many more 
who had already started for the Arctic 
gold-fields. All indications pointed to 
the advent of a small army of lawyers 
and doctors on the shores of Nome. But, 
though there was a stir in the atmosphere, 
the excitement was nothing compared 
with that at Seattle, which is the natural 
outfitting-point for Alaska; for San 
6 



THE RUSH IN 1900 

Francisco has had a long experience in 
these " excitements," and treats each re- 
curring one with comparative indiffer- 
ence. We took everything with us, — 
tents, stoves, provisions, all sufficient to 
enable us to live independently for three 
or four months, — not to mention the 
" law library " and surveying apparatus. 

The (7. D, Lane was the ship, named 
after its owner, the prominent mining 
man, who had backed up his belief in the 
genuineness of the new country by in- 
vesting in it a great deal of money, and 
who was now taking up in his boat ma- 
chinery, supplies, miners, and general 
passengers, some four hundred persons in 
all. The sailing from San Francisco, 
and the scenes of farewell at the dock, 
were both amusing and impressive. Eeady 
exchanges of repartee between the ship 
7 



THE LAND OF NOME 

and the dock were in order. Passengers 
held up "pokes," small buckskin bags 
for gold-dust, and cheerfully shouted to 
their friends that they would come back 
with their " sacks " full. But there was 
about it all at the same time something 
not altogether gay. It was no certain un- 
dertaking. The great majority, of course, 
would not return successful, and it was 
not improbable that some might not re- 
turn at all. 

I presume that the Lane carried in its 
personnel an average assortment of the 
eighteen thousand similarly brought to 
Nome; perhaps, however, a higher aver- 
age, due to the fact that many of its pas- 
sengers went legitunately to work in the 
employ of the Wild Goose Mining and 
Trading Company, in which Mr. Lane 
is largely interested. Nevertheless, stu- 
8 



THE RUSH IN 1900 

dents of human nature could there have 
found an ample field for study in the 
array of adventurers, gamblers, pugilists, 
alleged actors and actresses, — a nonde- 
script male and female population, which 
might very appropriately be collected 
under the term " grafters " — an expres- 
sion commonly used to designate individ- 
uals who ingraft themselves at the ex- 
pense of others. One of the first men we 
met was Y , who shared accommoda- 
tions with us. He was a practical miner, 
who had prospected through nearly all of 
the Western States and parts of Alaska, 
and, like the great majority, he was going 
to make a try at the new gold-fields, with 
nothing assured, but with the determina- 
tion to strike out somewhere and " make 
it." It did not take long to learn that 
the real American miner, the man who 
9 



THE LAND OF NOME 

undergoes hardships and endures priva- 
tions such as but few people can know or 
understand, is a fine, intelligent, and gen- 
erous citizen, whom it is a pleasure to 
know. 

On the 24th of May the ship steamed 
out of the Golden Gate and up the coast, 
to stop €71 route at Seattle for addi- 
tional machinery, freight, and passengers, 
though it was difficult to figure just 
where the latter were to be distributed. 
All ages are subject to the gold fever. 
We met aboard ship a gentleman of our 
own university, a classmate of Senator 
Stewart, who, catching this fever in 1849, 
without waiting to graduate, left New 
Haven with Mr. Stewart in 1850, and 
joined the pioneers in California. He 
has since then been a Congressman and 
held an important federal office. His 
10 



THE RUSH IN 1900 

ship's companions likewise had been 
through the " early days " in the West- 
ern country, and were now going to take 
a look at the new El Dorado, but, I in- 
ferred, rather as investors and investi- 
gators, and not, like the majority, depen- 
dent upon what the new country might 
give to them. These people were worth 
listening to in their continual discussions 
as to the conditions to be met and the 
opportunities to be grasped in the Nome 
country. One of them I remember say- 
ing that there would be more broken 
hearts at Nome than in any other com- 
munity. And there were on the Lane 
people who had staked their all upon this 
venture, and who confidently believed 
that, soon after landing, they could dig 
out a small fortune. A number of these, 
men with their wives, knew practically 
11 



THE LAND OF KOME 

nothing about mining. I recall a woman 
of refinement from the South, who, with 
her two sons, recently graduated from 
college, was likewise in quest of a ready 
fortune. She had never cooked in her 
life, but thought it would be interesting 
to look after her boys while they were 
digging gold from the beach to empty 
into their mother's lap. This sentiment 
certainly betokened more hopefulness 
than common sense. A few days after 
their arrival at [N^ome, they departed for 
home, having had all the experience they 
wanted; and 1 subsequently learned on 
my return that the mother had been con- 
fined in a hospital for some time, suffer- 
ing from brain fever, a malady which it 
is strange she could have contracted. 

The Lane remained six days at Seattle, 
and was one of the last boats to sail 
12 



THE EUSH IN 1900 

from that port for Nome. Everything in 
Seattle seemed to be labeled "Cape 
Nome"; it was in the air. General Ran- 
dall and the military were there, expecting 
to sail for the North any day on the trans- 
port Seward^ the guardians and guaranty 
of law and order in the new camp until the 
inauguration of the civil authorities. The 
lawyers were anxious to know the status 
of the Alaska bill then under debate in 
the Senate, especially with reference to 
its provisions regarding the rights to 
hold and mine the beach. This matter 
proved, after all, to be of very little con- 
sequence, as the beach had been practi- 
cally worked out the preceding season 
and before the arrival of the 1900 stam- 
pede, about two million dollars' worth of 
fine "dust" having been taken from it. 
But the bill became a law on the sixth day 
13 



THE LAND OF NOME 

of June, when we were on the high seas, 
and the best that the goodly sized legal 
fraternity represented on the JLane could 
do was to discuss the proposed provisions, 
and " what would you do in such a case? " 
There was developing aboard ship a cer- 
tain nervousness to get away — people 
wanted to arrive among the first, and 
thought that they were losing valuable 
time; but Mr. Lane, who had been at 
Nome before, remarked that we should 
arrive there none too late, and his judg- 
ment proved to be sound. 

Leaving Seattle June 3, with some- 
thing of a send-off and some interesting 
additions to the passenger list, associa- 
tions with civilization were finally sev- 
ered. 

As it is problematical in the spring 
just when the Bering Sea is free from 
14 



THE KUSH IN 1900 

ice, the first objective point of all vessels 
bound for the Arctic regions is Dutch 
Harbor, Unalaska, one of the numerous 
Aleutian Islands at the mouth, so to 
speak, of Bering Sea, which extend in a 
broken chain across the Pacific Ocean 
almost to the coast of Asia. 

The stretch from Seattle to this Bering 
Sea harbor of refuge is twenty-one hun- 
dred miles, and the route is not like that 
of the delightful inside passage up the 
Gulf of Alaska, by Sitka and the Muir 
Glacier, replete with magnificent scenery, 
and calm. On the contrary, it furnishes 
nothing to gaze upon except the majestic 
and not always sufficiently tranquil ocean. 

There was, of course, on the Lane a 
goodly representation of the genus "know- 
all," whose fortunes were really assured by 
reason of an infallible combination which 
15 



THE LAND OF NOME 

they held or device which they had con- 
trived. Such a combination was a certain 
Alaska " syndicate," from the East, whose 
component parts consisted of an ex- 
" judge," to decide the vital legal ques- 
tions which might arise in the acquisition 
of property ; an attorney, to search titles ; 
a general manager, who declared that he 
did n't know gold from brass, but would 
soon find out the difference; a couple of 
engineers, and some others — not to men- 
tion clever machinery with which to ex- 
tract gold, supplies of all kinds for a year 
at least, and the essentials of a ready- 
made house which could weather the 
fierce winter Arctic gales. It was really 
too good to endure long. Then, there 
were individuals who could demonstrate 
by their blue-prints just how the gold 
was to be dredged from the sea, it being 
16 



THE RUSH IN 1900 

to them a moral certainty that the gold, 
probably emanating from the Siberian 
shore, had been washed by the ocean 
upon the beach. One of professed large 
experience vehemently maintained that 
his theory of the beach deposits was the 
correct one; that is to say, the gold 
came down the Yukon Kiver attached 
to the bottom of icebergs which were 
carried out to sea, and then, somehow, 
through the kindness of the Japanese 
current, the gold which they brought was 
deposited upon the long-extending beach 
at Cape Nome! Of course, as had been 
clearly demonstrated in the preliminary 
United States geological report, the beach 
gold had been carried down from the in- 
terior by the streams emptying into Be- 
ring Sea, and there distributed in the 
black and "ruby" sand. 
17 



THE LAND OF NOME 

The atmosphere became chill and pen- 
etrating, the sunsets later, the nights 
less dark. The crowd were kept in good 
nature by sparring-matches conducted 
along professional lines, mock trials, con- 
certs, and recitations by the " profession." 
The popular song " Because I Love You " 
was murdered several tunes daily, only 
to be re-resurrected. We made the ac- 
quaintance of another Yale man, Mr. 

C , a member of the California bar, 

with whom I worked, weather and dis- 
position permitting, over the proposed 
Alaska laws, and with whom I later 
formed a law partnership. 

Early in the morning of June 11 the 
Lane went through Unimak Pass and was 
steaming toward Dutch Harbor, all aboard 
eager, with eyes straining, to see whether 
the vessels which had preceded us were 
18 



THE RUSH IN 1900 

there, or had continued up into the Bering 
Sea, navigation being open. To the sur- 
prise and delight of nearly all, there lay 
at anchor in that magnificent harbor, 
almost landlocked, what appeared to be 
the entire Nome fleet — steamers of all 
sizes, sailing-craft laden with lumber and 
black with passengers, and the United 
States vessels Wlieeling^ McCullough^ 
Manning^ Rush^ and Lawton, 

It is a weird and majestic spot. Great 
hills, almost mountains, barren of timber 
or shrubbery of any kind, and streaked 
with snow, come down precipitous to the 
water's edge. Rising beyond these are 
snow-covered mountains. Not a tree nor 
anything green is visible. The surface 
is somber with the all-pervading tundra, 
or Russian moss, which stretches over 
the greater part of Alaska and northern 
19 



THE LAND OF NOME 

Siberia. Looking down the harbor are 
discovered the large warehouses of one 
of the great Alaska commercial and trad- 
ing companies, and the ancient and unique 
Russian settlement of Unalaska, peopled 
mainly by a mixed-breed population of 
Russian, Japanese, and native Eskimo 
constituents. There are a picturesque 
little Russian church, and the Jesse Lee 
Home for orphans and foundlings, en- 
dowed by a number of charitable women 
in AVashington. 

It was quickly learned that a number 
of the more adventurous ships were 
frozen up in the ice. Others were not 
known about; perhaps they had found a 
lucky opening and slipped through. Sev- 
eral of the vessels then in the harbor, 
essaying to get through, had met with 
ice in quantity, and had discreetly re- 
20 



THE RUSH IN 1900 

turned. A photograph taken by a pas- 
senger on one of these latter ships, posted 
up on the Lane^ tended to chill the ardor 
of some of the enthusiastic souls who 
were for going right through and losing 
no time in accumulating wealth. It is 
safe only for wooden vessels, specially 
fortified for the purpose, to " buck " the 
ice, such as whalers and the United States 
revenue cutter Bear^ which was among 
the first to arrive at IS'ome. The Santa 
Anna had had a fearful time of it, having 
been afire in the hold for four days, 
reaching Dutch Harbor, however, with 
no lives lost, but with all baggage 
destroyed. 

Naturally, every one was keen to be 

ashore and to stroll about the island, 

meeting friends who had come on other 

vessels. Everything was "wide open." 

21 



THE LAIS^D OF NOME 

Hastily-erected saloons and gambling 
devices of all kinds were doing a flourish- 
ing business, patronized indiscriminately 
by the sexes ; and there was a large run 
on the stores for candies and sweets 
generally. I trustingly gave to one 
of the most intelligent-looking native 
women some soiled clothes to wash. 
"When returned they were scarcely rec- 
ognizable, but she insisted that they 
belonged to me. People were almost 
universally complaining about the over- 
crowding on their ships and the poor 
food, so much so that we of the Lane 
began to believe that we were living 
strictly en prince. Some of the horses 
which had been taken ashore were in a 
pitifully cut-up condition, but nearly all 
that I saw at Nome were splendid-look- 
ing annuals. Base-ball matches between 
22 



THE RUSH IN 1900 

nines picked from the various ships were 
held, with the usual ensuing umpire dif- 
ficulties. After a while, however, the 
novelty of the thing wore away. Under 
the leadership of a certain "judge," 
prominent in the organization of town- 
ships in Oklahoma, a party of us from 
the Lane^ half in jest and half seriously, 
staked out, pursuant to law, a town site 
to be known as " Lane City," and drew 
lots for our respective real-estate hold- 
ings. This move seemed to create some 
little stir, and there appeared many who 
wished to secure a lot in the new metrop- 
olis. I believe that I am still the town 
recorder; but it will be very strange in- 
deed if the law will suffer such transient 
guests thus to create, and in absence 
maintain, a town site, and the more espe- 
cially so when others claim the owner- 
23 



THE LAND OF NOME 

ship of the property. As a matter of 
fact, Dutch Harbor will very probably 
become an important station in the Philip- 
pine and Asiatic trade of this country; 
and General Randall, in a recent report, 
has strongly recommended the govern- 
ment acquisition of land there for com- 
mercial and outfitting purposes. 

The weather had been somewhat misty 
and chilly, with only occasional gleams 
of sunshine. It was not disagreeable, 
however, and at times was very pleasant. 
The ships were daily setting out for the 
North, and the Zjane was delaying with 
a number of others, awaiting the advent 
of an expected collier. There were ex- 
citement and curiosity, indeed, when the 
Cleveland came in, the first large vessel 
to discharge passengers and freight at 
!N'ome and to return for a second trip. 
24 



THE EUSH IN 1900 

Adventurous, she had taken advantage of 
a lucky break in the ice, and had safely 
gotten through and reached her destina- 
tion. The dock was crowded with people 
seeking interviews with those returning 
on the Cleveland. The latter were, for 
the most part, a poor-looking collection, 
who told dire and terrible tales of the 
Nome "fake" and of the lawlessness 
and crime existing there. They said that 
the beach had been exhausted of its gold, 
and that people were leaving for home as 
quickly as the steamers would take them 
or they could scrape up enough money 
to pay their passage. To those especially 
who were relying upon getting ready 
money from the beach this news was not 
reassuring. 

On June 17 the Lane withdrew from 
Dutch Harbor and headed up into Be- 
25 



THE LAND OF NOME 

ring Sea. Whales were frequently seen, 
sometimes very close to the ship, and we 
occasionally skirted around fields of ice. 
A matter about which we particularly 
wished to know, and regarding which 
the testimony of experts was sharply 
conflicting, was just what kind of a cli- 
mate is that of the Nome country. Some 
said that it was chilly and that it rained 
all the while, and that rubber boots and 
oilskins were always essential; a former 
whaling captain, with whom I could talk 
]Srew Bedford, said that frequently dur- 
ing the middle of the day the sun was so 
hot as to be almost unbearable. But as 
to knowing anything at that time, the 
weather proposition was a gamble. Since 
the coming of the Cleveland there could 
be detected among the " syndicate " a 
certain lack of enthusiasm, as evidenced 
26 



THE RUSH IN 1900 

by a few chance remarks about the com- 
forts of home, and a less sprightly step 
and challenging eye. But, generally, on 
nearing the destination, the crowd aboard 
ship were in good spirits, though, natu- 
rally, somewhat more serious. It was 
now practically perpetual daylight. 

The first sight of Nome City, as we 
steamed toward the place in the clear 
morning light of June 20, was impres- 
sive. It was indeed a "white citv," 
tents, tents, tents extending along the 
shore almost as far as the eye could see. 
Scattered in the denser and more con- 
gested part of the town were large 
frame and galvanized-iron structures, 
the warehouses and stores of the large 
companies; and there was the much- 
talked-of tundra, upon which the mul- 
titude were encamped, extending back 
27 



THE LAND OF NOME 

almost from the edge of the sea three or 
four miles to the high and rolling hills, 
which bore an occasional streak of snow. 
INot a tree, not a bit of foliage, nothing 
green, was in evidence. Had it not been 
for the chance discovery of gold in that 
remote spot, one passing along the coast 
would have considered it barren and for- 
lorn, " a dreary waste expanding to the 
skies." There is not even the semblance 
of a harbor. It is a mere shallow road- 
stead open to the clear sweep and attack 
of the Bering Sea. Anchored from one 
to two miles from the shore were strung 
along, I may say, scores of nondescript 
steamers and sailing-craft, with here and 
there a tug towing ashore lighters filled 
with passengers or freight, or bringing 
them back empty. These tugs were so 
few that they could command almost any 
price for a day's use, and proved verita- 
28 



THE RUSH IN 1900 

ble gold-mines to their owners. When 
the sea is at all rough no disembarking 
can be done. We were in great good 
luck to have at that time an unprece- 
dented spell of clear weather and calm 
seas, which tended to lessen the confu- 
sion and misery, which were, even under 
those favorable conditions, only too great. 
Well, here we were finally and at last, 
and now to face the music! Bundled 
into scows, passengers were towed by the 
light-draft boats to within some thirty 
feet of the shore, and then the scows were 
allowed to drift in upon the moderate 
but wetting surf. Women were carried 
ashore on the backs of men who waded 
out to the lighters ; and the men, for the 
most part, completed the remaining dis- 
tance in their rubber boots, or got wet, or 
imposed upon the back and good nature 
of some accommodating person. 
29 




II 

THE HYBRID CITY OF NOME 

'HE town forms dense right 
at the shore, extending back 
and along upon damp and 
muddy soil hitherto covered 
by the deep and marshy moss. The 
Snake River, a sluggish, unnavigable 
stream, coming from the back-lying hills 
and through the tundra, empties into the 
sea where the town tapers off at the 
north, and thereby forms a sand-spit. 

The first impressions after landing were 
those of confusion, waste, and filth. The 
shore was an indescribable mass of ma- 
chinery, lumber, and freight of all kinds, 
30 



THE HYBEID CITY OF NOME 

the greater part of which represented 
fortunes thrown away. Scattered about 
and along the shore, looking for an op- 
portunity to steal, were as tough a look- 
ing lot of rascals as one could meet. 
Upon walking into the center of the 
town one was greeted by a sight which 
beggars description. Certainly it was a 
case of " whited sepulcher." The white- 
ness viewed from afar disappeared. The 
main street was lined with hastily-erected 
two- story frame buildings, with here 
and there a tent — a series of saloons, 
gambling-places, and dance-halls, res- 
taurants, steamship agencies, various 
kinds of stores, and lawyers' " offices." 
It was filled with a mass of promiscuous 
humanity. Loads of stuff drawn by 
horses and dog-teams were being carted 
through the narrow, crowded ways, and 
31 



THE LAND OF NOME 

the cry of encouragement to the dogs of 
"Mush on" (dog French for Mar- 
chons) was heard frequently. Miners 
with hea\^ packs on their backs were 
starting out for the claims on the creeks 
and into the unknown interior, but the 
" bar-room " miner was far more in evi- 
dence. 

It was not the typical mining camp 
where the population for the greater 
part is composed of hardy, honest people 
who have undergone privation to reach 
their destination, and thereby represent, 
in a measure, the survival of the fittest; 
for this was a great impossible hybrid 
sort of city, accessible by steamer direct 
from San Francisco and Seattle, where the 
riffraff and criminals of the country were 
dumped, remote from restraints of law 
and order. I heard old-timers who had 
32 



THE HYBKID CITY OF NOME 

visited all the principal mining camps in 
recent years remark that this ]S"ome was 
the "toughest proposition" they had 
ever encountered, and I must admit that 
it would be difficult to picture anything 
tougher. However, it was soon realized 
that the matter to be reckoned with was 
that of sanitary conditions, or rather the 
lack of them. The general " toughness " 
of things and the inconveniences of get- 
ting settled had been in the main fore- 
seen and discounted, but the rather 
alarming outbreak of smallpox in the 
camp, and the reported filling up of the 
"pest-house," made matters somewhat 
more involved and complicated. There 
had been a warning in Seattle that cer- 
tain vessels were bringing up persons in- 
fected with the disease, and two of the 
suspected ships were then being held in 
33 



THE LAND OF NOME 

quarantine by the vigilant government 
representative, Lieutenant Jarvis, but the 
disease had, nevertheless, secured a foot- 
hold in the camp. Undoubtedly, how- 
ever, the matter was grossly exaggerated, 
and there were probably more deaths from 
pneumonia than from any other dis- 
ease. The smallpox scare, nevertheless, 
gave the doctors a good opening, for 
vaccination was strictly in order. Con- 
sidering in retrospect the site of the 
place, the total absence of any sewerage, 
and the great motley crowd there herded 
together, Nome proved to be a remarka- 
bly healthy camp — a fact due, in the main, 
to the prompt measures for sanitation 
taken by General Eandall immediately 
upon his arrival, and the introduction into 
the town, later in the season, of good 
water conveyed by pipes from the streams 
34 



THE HYBRID CITY OF NOME 

beyond. During the preceding year ty- 
phoid had been very prevalent and deaths 
numerous. A repetition was thus hap- 
pily avoided, though during the first days 
the prospects seemed indeed dismal, and 
the old-timers (always spoken of as 
" sour doughs " in Alaska) predicted 
that, after the rains should set in, the peo- 
ple were going to die like flies ; and, with- 
out the least exaggeration, it certainly 
looked that way. I believe, nevertheless, 
that if the story could be told, it would 
be learned that more lives have been lost 
in that country through drowning than 
in any other way. Hundreds of gold- 
hunters in small and unseaworthy boats, 
as soon as they could do so, left I^^ome to 
prospect the remoter coast and possible 
creeks, many of whom perished in the 
sudden and fierce storms which occur in 
35 



THE LAND OF NOME 

the Bering Sea, and wives and mothers 
wondered why no letters came from 
Alaska. 

We were four or five days collecting 
our seventeen packages of freight, and 
with V took turns day and night wait- 
ing for the uncertain lighters to come 
ashore with their mixed loads of ma- 
chinery and miscellaneous supplies. I 
believe that between us we saw and ex- 
amined every parcel which came from the 

hold of the Lane, C was ill aboard 

ship, and we looked after his freight as 
well. Some days it was too rough to 
discharge any, or a tug could not be 
secured or had broken down. It was 
good luck finally to get it all, for 
many were left high and dry with no- 
thing, their vessels having returned for a 
second trip with cargo not wholly dis- 
86 



THE HYBEID CITY OF NOME 

charged. During these nights — or what 
should have been nights — we were for- 
tunate to have extended to us the hospi- 
tality of the floor of the storehouse of 
the Wild Goose Mining and Trading 
Company, and I can very distinctly recall 
the stretched-out, blanketed figures lying 
about, the coughing of a sick Eskimo 
family in the attic above, and the yelling 
of the fellow across the way exhorting 
people in the ever-restless street to enter 
the dance-hall and see the " most beauti- 
ful women in the world." 

Until our tents and provisions could be 
collected, it was necessary to live, so to 
speak, " on the town," but restaurant com- 
petition was already so keen that one 
could get a really excellent and clean 
meal for a dollar and a half or a dollar. 
I drank no water at all, unless it had 
37 



THE LAKD OF NOME 

been boiled, and then took it with tea. 
It is possible thus to accustom one's self; 
but I distinctly remember being on one 
occasion so thirsty as to give fifty cents 
for a glass of ginger-ale, and poor at 
that. Despite our special vigilance in 
watching our freight as it accumulated 
on the shore, in an unguarded moment, 
when our backs were turned, one of the 
numerous thugs stole Y ' s valise, con- 
taining many essentials and keepsakes of 
the miner which could not be replaced. The 
calm, manly manner in w^hich he bore his 
great loss, for which my brother and I 
felt partly responsible, was an excellent 
example for us when, on the morrow, we 
similarly had stolen from us the sack 
which contained our invaluable sleeping- 
robes, made from army blankets, things 
which we missed all summer, and the 
38 



THE HYBEID CITY OF NOME 

lack of which made us mentally sore. 
Of course, among such an assortment of 
persons, there were a number of murders, 
suicides, and indulgences in " gun-play," 
and it was not precisely the proper thing 
in the small hours to stroll carelessly 
about the place. 

Early in the spring of 1900 a " strike " 
had been made at Topkok, a small stretch 
of beach some thirty miles east of Nome, 
near the mouth of a dry creek called 
Daniel's. Four men with primitive con- 
trivances had taken out at least forty 
thousand dollars' worth of gold-dust in 
thirty days, when the secret leaked out, 
and a stampede to that quarter ensued. 
Small vessels of all kinds, charging from 
fifteen to twenty-five dollars a passenger 
and a good deal for freight, were making 
the trip, crowded, between Nome and the 
39 



THE LAND OF NOME 

new diggings. It was generally conceded 
that all the ground along the creeks back 
of Nome, and the tundra, had been staked 
and restaked for many miles ; in fact, near- 
ly all the surrounding country had been 
gobbled up, on speculation mainly, after 
the rich discoveries on Anvil and other 
creeks. There had been a rush to Port 
Clarence, forty miles north and west, but 
it was common belief that no gold had 
been discovered there, and that it was a 
mere real-estate boom and a fake excite- 
ment. Cape York, thirty miles beyond 
Port Clarence, which had been reported 
rich the preceding fall, and where it was 
believed there would be a considerable 
and prosperous settlement the following 
season, had not panned out successfully. 
The beach about Nome had been already 
practically exhausted, so that it yielded 
40 



THE HYBRID CITY OF NOME 

in its best spots only a few dollars a day, 
an amount which does not go very far in 
a new country. It was, therefore, a seri- 
ous question for the average miner to de- 
cide in what direction and how he should 
move. Undoubtedly, the poverty of the 
beach, which was considered common 
property, was a keen disappointment to 
the many who had hoped to take from 
it sufficient wherewithal to tide them 
through the winter and furnish a little 
capital for future operations. The work- 
ing season is short, scarcely three months, 
as operations must practically cease 
when the water freezes; and one must 
"strike it" early, or not at all. Hun- 
dreds of the adventurers immediately 
threw up the sponge, cursed the ISTome 
" fake " ; and, if they could pay the fare, 
departed for home. The steamers for the 
41 



THE LAND OF KOME 

most part were returning as crowded as 
they came, and many of their passengers, 
on reaching home, exaggerating the suffi- 
ciently bad conditions which did exist, 
immediately circulated in the press of the 
country most alarming accounts of the 
situation at Nome, and also generally 
condemned as a fraud a country marvel- 
ously rich in gold, a country which they 
had not given even a decent trial. 

Having finally collected the bulk of 
our freight, we put up a tent on the sand- 
spit across the Snake River, half a mile 
perhaps from the heart of the metropolis, 
the only ground except the beach which 
was not tundra. This place was already 
becoming thickly populated with tempo- 
rary tenants like ourselves, small stores 
of various kinds, and lodging-tents, not 
to mention a fat individual near us who, 
42 



THE HYBRID CITY OF NOME 

decorated and bedecked with medals, 
hung out her sign — " Lady Barber." 
Our camp was about fifty yards from the 
ocean. Driftwood from Siberia, tossed 
up by unusually severe storms, lay about 
in quantity. V , with his mming part- 
ner, E , camped with us, and all took 

turns in guarding the provisions, cook- 
ing, and doing camp chores generally, 
during this period of deliberation. At 
times during the day it was very warm, 
— the sun blazed down hot, — but toward 
six o'clock in the evening it became chilly, 
and at night it was positively and uncom- 
fortably cold; for, be it remembered, all 
through that section of the country, a 
few feet from the surface, and this, too, 
in the case of the tundra, perennial layers 
of ice and frozen ground are met. Put- 
ting a flooring to the tent, and the pur- 
43 



THE LAND OF NOME 

chase of some reindeer- skins to fill the 
want caused by the "lifting" of our 
sleeping-robes and the mysterious disap- 
pearance of the folding cots, made the 
nights much more agreeable, and, fur- 
thermore, we were becoming inured to 
the climatic conditions. The midnight 
sun stood up in the heavens small and 
red like a toy balloon ; and it was the per- 
petual daylight, aggravated through the 
whiteness of the tent, which, aided by 
the cold, made those first nights almost 
sleepless ones. IS'ear us, living in a 
small hut fortified with driftwood and 
canvas, was a queer little old German- 
American, who was one of the pioneers 
in the Nome region. He was addressed 
as " Captain Cook," and, with a twinkle 
in Ms bright eye, he referred to his abode 
as his "castle." "We secured his good 
44 



THE HYBRID CITY OF NOME 

will, and the old fellow related some 
of his interesting experiences. He said, 
now that he had accumulated some gold, 
he was going home in the autumn to see his 
" leetle wife in Kansas City," whom he 
had not seen for many years. 

Westward along the beach, for miles, 
all kinds of contrivances, from the simple 
hand-" rocker " to complicated machinery, 
were being used to get the gold ; but the 
men did not seem cheerful in their work, 
and most of them would freely and can- 
didly admit that they were not making 
even good wages. Among the many 
strange sights on the beach was an enor- 
mous machine, built upon huge barrels, 
which some of our friends with the blue- 
prints were making ready to dredge gold 
from the sea. It represented a great deal 
of money. "When subsequently launched, 
45 



THE LAND OF NOME 

and tons of sand had been taken by it 
from beneath the sea, not five cents' worth 
of gold was found to compensate for the 
enormous expense and labor. Not far 
away, at a point which was to be its ter- 
minal, men were landing as best they 
could the machiner}^, rails, and ties for 
the railroad of the Wild Goose Company, 
which was to extend for several miles 
back over the tundra to the rich placer- 
mines on the creeks. 

Hundreds were living in tents upon the 
beach, thanks to the clemency of the 
weather. Within a very short distance 
from our camp, with their freight piled 
about, were the " syndicate," and quite 
unenthusiastic. There was defection in 
their camp. Actual^, the " syndicate " 
were selling out, and without a struggle. 
Several of its members very soon bade us 
46 



THE HYBRID CITY OF KOME 

farewell, and pulled out for what they 
thought the " real thing " — quartz-mmes 
in Oregon. And yet some of the mines 
on Anvil Creek even then, and with only a 
few men shoveling the pay dirt into the 
sluice-boxes, were turning out from ten 
to fifteen thousand dollars a day. To be 
sure, this was for the very few only, but, 
at the same time, it went to prove that the 
country was not a fraud. Even the dirt in 
those miserable Nome streets contained 
" colors," or small particles of gold ; and 
it is an incongruous thought that, of all 
the cities of the world, !N^ome City, as it 
is called, most nearly approaches the 
apocalyptic condition of having its streets 
paved with gold! 

We daily crossed the Snake River on 
" Gieger's Bridge " when going into the 
town for investigation and information. 
47 



THE LAND OF NOME 

Gieger was an enterprising fellow who 
had built a rough but sufficiently sub- 
stantial bridge at the mouth of the 
stream, and, by exacting a toll, he was 
making a pretty good thing out of it. 
Frame buildings of the wood of Puget 
Sound were going up like mushrooms 
throughout the town, and the noise of 
saw and hammer denoted that the car- 
penters were making small fortunes. 
" Offices " which could scarcely hold more 
than a chair and a table were for rent at 
one hundi^ed to one hundred and fifty 
dollars a month, and these, too, fre- 
quently were merely spaces penned off 
in connection with stores or bar-rooms. 
Absurd prices were demanded for town 
lots of very uncertain title. I know of 
one instance where four thousand dollars 
was given for a lot on the main street. 
48 



THE HYBKID CITY OF NOME 

The saloon which bore the proud sign 
" The Only Second-Class Saloon in Alas- 
ka " seemed to be the best appointed and 
to be playing to the largest audiences; 
but it was then too early for the miners 
to come in with their gold-dust, and the 
gamblers, therefore, were not doing a 
harvest business. We met college-bred 
men. A man I had known at college 
was doing business in a tent pending the 
building of a bank with safe-deposit 
vaults, of which he was the general man- 
ager. Another, with whom I had at- 
tended law school, and whom I had never 
seen or thought of since, had come to 
Nome in the first rush from Seattle, and 
now, situated in Easy Street, was one of 
the leaders of the Nome bar. The negro 
Pullman-car porter, whom we had last 
seen at San Antonio, Texas, on our way 
49 



THE LAND OF NOME 

out from the East, reintroduced himself 
to me on the street, to my infinite sur- 
prise, and wanted to know if I could give 
him work of some kind, which I was not 
then in position to do. We may have 
been responsible for his infection with 
the gold fever. 

The place was really under martial 
law. The town government, useless and 
corrupt, was practically nil ; and as it was 
believed that the federal judge, with his 
staff of assistants, would not arrive until 
August, it was the plain duty of the mil- 
itary to preserve order and, so far as pos- 
sible, leave legal matters in statu quo 
until the advent of the civil authorities as 
provided by the laws which had been re- 
cently enacted for Alaska. 

For various reasons which seemed good 
and sufficient, we decided to quit Nome 
50 



THE HYBRID CITY OF KOME 

and go to Council City. We knew that 
Mr. Lane's company had large interests 
in that region — that he believed in it; 
and we knew people on the Lane who 
had gone thither direct on reaching 
Nome. It was said, too, to be a health- 
ful country, with plenty of good water 
and even a belt of timber. One did not 
hear it much discussed at Nome, — peo- 
ple did not seem to know much about it, 
— but what was said was favorable. As 
to the means of reaching it, information 
was scanty, and that somewhat discour- 
aging, but certainly the thing to do was 
to go by boat east about seventy-five 
miles to the mouth of Golovin Bay, from 
which point we should have to travel up 
shallow rivers some fifty or sixty miles to 

Council City. C , who had been a 

pretty sick man, but who had declined to 
51 



THE LAND OF NOME 

follow certain " sound advice " and return 
home (having joined us from the Lane)^ 

and G , another fellow-passenger, 

thought the move a good one, and agreed 
to come with us. We four, therefore, mak- 
ing selections from our respective sup- 
plies, sold or otherwise disposed of pro- 
visions which were less essential, for the 
carr^dng of freight and supplies in that 
impossible country, however short the 
actual distance, is a very serious and ex- 
pensive matter. V and E were 

building their boat, though they had not 
yet decided in which direction to go; but 
they agreed to communicate with us some- 
how during the season. A tent labeled 
"Undertaker," with the American flag 
on top, had just been put up for business 
across the way from us; and it seemed 
fitting that we should celebrate the Fourth 
52 



THE HYBRID CITY OF NOME 

of July by leaving IS'ome. This was 
accomplished on the little steamer Dora^ 
belonging to the Alaska Commercial 
Company, not much to look at, but it 
afforded the greatest comfort and luxury 
we had known since the days at San 
Francisco, and, furthermore, it carried 
di'inkable wat^\ 



5$ 



Ill 



TEAVEL TO THE INTERIOR 




EAYIISTG Nome in the even- 
ing, by the following noon 
we were off a small settlement 
comprising a few scattered 
sod houses, warehouses, and tents, called 
either by the Indian name " Chenik," or 
"Dexter's," after the pioneer who lived 
there with his Eskimo wife and children. 
Dexter had settled at Chenik a number 
of years ago, and was making money 
by trading with the natives, when, in the 
autumn of 1898, the discovery of gold at 
Nome made him a very rich man. He 
was among the first to secure valuable 
54 



TKAVEL TO THE INTEEIOR 

claims. Chenik, as I prefer to call it, is 
a sand-spit in the entrance to Golovin 
Bay, a large and shallow body of water 
with treacherous mud-flats, surrounded 
by great barren hills and the all-pervad- 
ing tundra, IS'ot a tree is to be seen, 
but rising immediately behind the scat- 
tered settlement is a steep hill, less som- 
ber than the rest, upon which the occa- 
sional wooden bier of a departed Eskimo 
makes the scene less monotonous. There 
is a small Swedish mission, in charge of 
a good man, Mr. Hendricksen, who was 
looking after the welfare of fifty or sixty 
natives there encamped. The entire pic- 
ture is far more cheerful than that of 
I^ome. Until further and more definite 
information concerning our destination 
could be gathered, we made temporary 
camp on dry ground not far from the 
55 



THE LAND OF NOME 

shore, fortunate in being able to borrow 
some loose boards for a flooring. The 
weather certainly had been and was very- 
good to us, the days bright and clear 
and, at times, quite warm, but the nights 
always cold. 

Generally, what was learned about the 
Council City country was far from reas- 
suring. Men who seemed to be of a 
sturdy, reliable sort, and who said that 
they had been there, reported that it was 
not worth while, and dilated upon the 
arduous work of dragging one's self and 
one's boat up the shallow streams, eaten 
up by mosquitos, to find everything staked 
and nothing doing. I recall a Hebrew who 
made us a visit, and, almost with tears in 
his eyes, entreated us not to blight our 
young lives by going to Council City; 
and what a chapter of horrors he de- 



TRAVEL TO THE INTERIOR 

tailed I He maintained that we should 
go to Eagle City, about fifteen hundred 
miles distant via the Yukon River, where 
nuggets as large as one's fist lay care- 
lessly about, and where there was a great 
field for lawyers. He insisted that we 
take his picture, in order that in the future 
we could point to it, saying, " This is the 
man who advised us not to go to Council 
City." It was subsequently learned that 
this gentleman had gone half-way to 
Council, and no farther. We met some, 
however, who believed it to be a good 
country, and who were making ready to 
set out for it. To get freight up the 
rivers a narrow and shallow boat is essen- 
tial, and such a craft, twenty-two feet 
in length, was quickly and dexterously 
knocked together out of rough lumber by 
two enterprising carpenters who were 
57 



THE LAND OF NOME 

doing a land-office business. Each one of 
us became a quarter-owner in the Mush- 
on^ as the boat was christened. 

Living at Chenik was not agreeable, 
and we were willing to tackle Council 
City anyhow. We four, together with 
the more valuable of the supplies, occu- 
pied a ten-by-twelve tent, and the water 
proposition was worse than that at Nome. 
It meant a long walk up a hill past 
the Indian graves and along the high 
cliff descending steep to the water's edge, 
to a crevice in it which held a bank of 
frozen snow. This was brought back in 
buckets and melted, and, for drinking 
purposes, boiled and filtered. Then, too, 
the general epidemic of sickness which 
prevailed during the season of 1900 among 
the natives throughout northwestern 
Alaska was here manifest. They all 
58 



TRAVEL TO THE INTERIOR 

coughed, and while we were at Chenik 
there were several deaths from a compli- 
cation of measles and pneumonia. Two 
young Swedish women, belonging to the 
mission, were faithfully ministering to the 
sick, for the Eskimo is as helpless when 
ill as are the members of his household 
to care for hun. Later, Dexter found 
a dozen of the unfortunates dead across 
the bay, and tumbled their remains into a 
single grave. 

It is estimated to be fifty miles from 
Chenik to Council City — twelve miles 
across Golovin Bay to the mouth of the 
Fish River, which in delta form debouches 
into the bay, and the remaining distance 
up the Fish River and the ^N'eukluk (the 
Indian name for river-flowing-from-the- 
west), a tributary nearly as large as the 
main stream. White Mountain, a spot 
59 



THE LAlSriy OF NOME 

where the Wild Goose Company has a 
storehouse, a depot for its mining claims 
above, is about half the way from Chenik 
to Council, and is the head of navigation 
for the several small, light-draft stern- 
wheelers which occasionally make the trip 
in the interest of the larger mine-owners. 
It lessens the strain tremendously to get 
a lift or a tow from one of these boats; 
and, having obtained the good will of the 
crew of the Arctic Bird^ and strengthened 
it by a bottle of whisky, we got what we 
wanted. The Mush-on we had, so to 
speak, tarred and feathered, and made 
water-tight and filled with our freight, as 
much as it could safely contain, the re- 
mainder being stored in the Arctic Bird, 
We were about to put our boat in tow 
and set out, when who should suddenly 
appear upon the scene but our two friends 
60 



TRAVEL TO THE INTERIOR 

of the Lane^ H and T , with their 

boat, just returned from Council, looking 
very tough and very seedy. We were 
exhorted to reconsider our plans, and as 
these were mining men whom we knew, 
whose judgment was entitled to respect, 
we promptly did so. As the freight was 
being taken off, though they were very 
good about it, the triumvirate crew of the 
Arctic Bird were not a little bit amused, 
for of course it looked as if we had lost 
our nerve at the last minute. The re- 
turned prospectors had been disappointed 
in a piece of ground upon which they had 
a " lay " or lease, which fact, in the main, 
accounted for their premature departure 
and the lugubrious view which they took. 
So we camped again at the same spot 
and deliberated. Finally, in the evening 

of July 15, we set out, T transfer- 

61 



THE LAND OF NOME 

ring himself to us, and G remain- 
ing with H 5 the two latter having 

decided to get somehow to St. Michaels, 
thence up the Yukon to the Tanana 
River, where a strike had been reported, 
and big game was said to be abun- 
dant. As a matter of fact, they were 
obliged to remain at Chenik for a consid- 
erable time on account of the quarantine 
which all ports had against Nome and 
vessels which had touched there. 

The Mush-on was the last of the string 
in tow, which consisted of a small barge or 
lighter, containing Wild Goose Company 
machinery, and the boats of several others, 
who were also going up the rivers. My 

brother steered the barge, and C our 

boat, according to instructions from the 

captain. T and I, who felt used 

up, lounged on some sacks near the 
62 



TRAVEL TO THE IKTERIOR 

warm engine. After running upon and 
backing off various mud-flats, at mid- 
night the Arctic Bird rested at the 
delta of the Fish Eiver, and all hands 
drank coffee, and the whisky which 
represented our fare. It was, of course, 
daylight, — a weird, grayish effect, — and 
fairly, but not disagreeably, cold. Then 
we entered and pushed slowly up the 
swift and shallow stream, the mosqui- 
tos, for the first time in our wander- 
ings to date, making themselves manifest 
and felt. All of us had the same thought 
and sensations. For the first time there 
was a semblance of " God's country." 
The beautifully clear stream, — flanked on 
each side by scrub willows and an occa- 
sional small spruce-tree, — whose tempting 
water one could dip up and drink ad lib- 
itum^ seemed in places filled with fish, 
63 



THE LAND OF NOME 

darting swiftly about above the gravel 
bed. Hills that appeared more like 
mountains loomed up in the distance, 
gray in the early light. There was the 
inevitable tundra, of course, but it seemed 
less all-pervading — it had finally met 
with some competition. 

There were many curves and sharp 
turns where the boats in tow would have 
been wrecked but for the men who, 
wrapped in their sweaters and coats, 
steered them. Many times the Arctic 
Bird would run upon a riffle (where the 
water runs very shallow over the gravel), 
to be temporarily baffled and obliged to 
back off and seek another coiu*se. The 
stream averaged hardly two feet in depth. 
Fi^equently the fraction of an inch meant 
progress or failure. When in plain sight 
and almost in reach of White Moun- 
64 



TEAVEL TO THE INTERIOR 

tain, that fraction of an inch was not in 
our favor, and it being then three o'clock 
in the morning, anchor was thrown out, 
and all hands turned in to await the com- 
ing of the tide below, the crew pulUng 
out their mattresses, and the " cheechaw- 
kers " (the Eskimo name for newcomers, 
universally used in Alaska) conforming 
their shapes to the various sacks and 
baggage. By noon we were disembarked 
and camped at White Mountain, a few 
feet from the river. Our "library" of 
law books seemed to weigh a ton. This 
was the best camping- spot yet. The 
scene was pretty; it seemed a healthful 
place ; and water, plentiful and good, was 
very near at hand. But the mosquitos 
were numerous and fiercely persistent; 
and before turning in, the tent was sealed 
as hermetically as possible, and there 
65 



THE LAND OF NOME 

ensued a general and complete killing of 
the insects that remained inside. 

In the forenoon of the day following, 
July 17, we felt ready to start. Even if 
our boat could have held all om^ freight, 
which weighed perhaps a ton, it was not 
wise to carry it, on account of the extreme 
shallowness of the stream, it being then, 
according to the " sour doughs," miprece- 
dentedly low, due to the unusual lack of 
rain. So half of the freight was intrusted 
to John Dejus, a French Canadian, who, 
with his partner, was " going up to Coun- 
cil anyhow," and who agreed to freight 
our belongings at what was a very rea- 
sonable figure, considering the toil which 
it entailed. A certain amount of unpack- 
ing and rearranging had to be done in 
order to have readily at hand cooking- 
utensils and food and all the comfort that 
66 



TRAVEL TO THE INTEEIOR 

could be manufactured for the trip up 
the rivers. The tow-line was eighty or a 
hundred feet long, with small pieces of 
rope branching out near the end to throw 
over the shoulder and pull from, the ob- 
ject being to work from the shore and 
keep the boat well out in the stream, in 
the deeper water. Three of us pulled, 
and one sat in the stern and steered with 
an oar. As a matter of fact, the fellow 
who had the latter occupation had the 
hardest time of it; and, as we progressed, 
there was greater enthusiasm for the end 
of the line than for the " steering " posi- 
tion, which meant a continual jumping 
out into the stream and shoving the boat 
off from the shore, or backing it off a 
riffle and pulling and guiding its nose out 
against the swift, adverse current into 
water perhaps an inch deeper, which saved 
67 



THE LAND OF NOME 

the situation. Hip rubber boots were 
essential. Undoubtedly, it was hard, 
exhausting work. We met others with 
boats less suited to the task than ours, 
apparently hopelessly stuck, pulling, haul- 
ing, shoving, and swearing. It was fre- 
quently necessary for some unfortunates 
to unload their boats, get them over a 
riffle, and then reload. Others would 
" cache " part of their freight (deposit it 
by the way), and struggle onward, to re- 
turn later for the remainder. At first we 
got along very well pulling from the 
shore, though this meant not infrequently 
falling over one another when the shore 
developed into a bank with uneven ground, 
or delays and complications arose from 
the protruding brush. However, as the 
stream was very low, most of the work 
was done from the dry bed. At times the 
68 



TEAVEL TO THE INTEKIOR 

mosquitos were very annoying; all of us 
wore netting. One night, when about to 
encamp, almost dead to the world, these 
pests were the worst I have ever en- 
countered; the atmosphere was black 
with them. But, on the whole, the mos- 
quito featui^e of the trip had been much 
exaggerated; for, as we proceeded, the 
netting was wholly dispensed with, and 
at Council City, most appreciated of sur- 
prises, these insects were not at all! It 
almost took the heart out of one to see 
returning prospectors or freighters in 
their long, narrow skiffs, sometimes as- 
sisted by a sail, come flying down the 
stream, who, when hailed as to the con- 
dition of the river above, invariably 
shouted back that it became more difli- 
cult. And it did become more difficult 
soon after turning into the Neukluk 
69 



THE LAKD OF NOME 

River; and, furthermore, it began to 
storm, so that when our tent had been 
finally erected, it was a question whether 
the wind would not tear out the pegs, 
which had been driven into the loose 
gravel of the dry river-bed, and land us 
somewhere down-stream. But all that 
is now an interesting reminiscence. In 
spots the stream was black with salmon 
and salmon-trout. We passed several 
camps of the river Eskimos, who were 
drying fish, fastened in clothes-pin fash- 
ion upon an ingeniously contrived rack. 
The Neukluk in places was broad and 
shallow, or broken up into a number of 
streams by alternate gravel bars, or occa- 
sionally the stream broke, forming an 
island, and it was a question which branch 
to follow. Rain for a day added to the 
complications, but it was not suflB.cient to 
70 



TRAVEL TO THE INTEEIOR 

raise the stream. As our destination was 
neared, the country appeared bolder, more 
mountainous, and it was a pleasure to see 
once in a while a little forest of spruce 
on the shore of the stream. But now the 
tow-line was practically abandoned, and 
it was a case of hauling and shoving the 
boat with hands and shoulders, one of us 
frequently going on in advance to dis- 
cover a route which would afford the 
necessary passage, or to kick out a channel 
through the stones and gravel. It was a 
wonder to me frequently that some of us 
were not bowled over, tired as we were, by 
the strong, swift current. Sometimes it 
was too much for poor human nature to 
stand, and the one would curse the other 
liberally for not doing this or that, all to 
be forgotten and forgiven after the inner 
man had been appeased and rest obtained. 
71 



THE LAI^D OF NOME 

At last, late in the day of July 19, on 
rounding one of the many curves of the 
river. Council City, in the bright evening 
sunlight, burst upon the view, the pretti- 
est, best sight that we had seen in Alaska. 
The peculiar light seemed to magnify it, 
to make it stand out very clear and dis- 
tinct. There is a sudden high plateau, 
terminating abrupt and sheer at the stream 
in a rocky cliff some thirty or forty feet 
high, bare for the most part, but covered 
here and there with a growth of moss 
and shrubbery. This elevation tapers 
down to the level of the stream, where 
the little camp of miners marks, at the 
east, the point where Mel sing Creek 
flows into the l^eukluk, and also falls off 
at the west, where the large camp or 
general reservation is found, free ground 
for all. Along the plateau and beyond— 
72 



TRAVEL TO THE INTERIOR 

a sprawling, scattered collection of log 
cabins, saloons, and dance-halls, with 
here and there a sod house or tent — is 
Council City. Back of it, to the north 
and west, along the foot of a bleak moun- 
tain which seems to shelter the camp, 
is the narrow belt of invaluable timber. 
The river-bed here is perhaps a hundred 
yards wide, but at that time the greater 
part of it was visible, the stream breaking 
above and coming down in two rapid, 
narrow forks touching each side of the 
shore. Across the river and the bar, and 
following its course, is a long stretch of 
tundra reaching out for several miles to 
low and barren mountains in the south 
and west. In a straight line southwest, 
over the tundra and mountains, it is said 
to be eighty or a hundred miles to Nome. 
In the late autumn of 1897, a number 
73 



THE LAND OF NOME 

of prospectors, on being told by a native 
that there was gold in this section, set 
out from Chenik. They wintered at the 
present site of Council, and in the fol- 
lowing spring staked out what seemed to 
them the best mining ground in the sur- 
rounding country, the richer claims being 
on Ophir Creek, a tributary to the Neuk- 
luk, several miles above Council City. 
This, therefore, is the pioneer mining 
camp in northwestern Alaska, but known 
to comparatively a few only, on account 
of its inaccessibility. 

We passed the camp at Melsing Creek, 
and, exchanging salutations with the men 
there, who knew how we felt, proceeded 
slowly along the foot of the cliff, over 
the last riffle. Then, making fast the 
Mush'On among the other boats, we 
pitched our tent near the stream on the 
74 



TRAVEL TO THE INTERIOR 

" reservation " — there at last. This expe- 
rience from White Mountain to Council 
was the hardest physical work which any- 
one of us had ever done or ever expects 
to do. The distance from White Moun- 
tain is generally estimated to be twenty- 
five or thirty miles. Leaving there at ten 
o'clock Tuesday morning, and making 
good average time, we were at Council at 
half-past eight Thursday evening, the 
actual working time being twenty-three 
hours, and the remainder being spent for 
rest and meals. 



75 




IV 

THE INLAND COUNTRY— THE MINES 

'HIS place had the appearance 
of a real mining camp. The 
men one saw, for the most 
part, looked like the genuine 
article. A number said that this was the 
country. Many were non-committal — 
they were making ready their packs for 
the " mush " to the auxiliary creeks above, 
where they thought the richer deposits 
were. All had to admit that it was an 
auriferous country, that "colors" could 
be found everywhere along the creeks, 
but the question was, and always is. Will 
it pay to work the ground? It fre- 
76 



THE INLAND COUJSTTRY-THE MINES 

quently happens that one is the owner of 
a mining claim which undoubtedly con- 
tains a fortune in gold, but the unfor- 
tunate fact remains that it will cost him 
more money to get the gold from the 
ground than the value of the gold which 
is in it. All agreed, however, that this 
looked something more like "God's coun- 
try." There was a verse going the 
rounds whose sum and substance was 
that the devil had to be punished, and, 
therefore, had been sent to N'ome. 

"We dined that evening at midnight, our 
meals being somewhat irregular in those 
days. On the 19th of July this definite 
resting-spot had been found, and here we 
would try our luck until the close of the 
season. The most desirable and health- 
ful position seemed to be up on the cliff 
where the log buildings, which denoted 
77 



THE LAND OF NOME 

the heart of the " city," were situated. 
It was soon learned that the place had 
been surveyed, imaginary streets provided 
for, and town lots duly awarded. This 
fact was discovered the next day, after 
we had selected a spot for encampment 
and were about to level it off. Just then 
we were interrupted by an individual 
who held the proud position of town 
recorder, who, pleasantly enough, said 
that we were about to squat in the center 
of a street^ and that, although he person- 
ally had no objection, our camping there 
would establish a precedent which might 
cause trouble. We shall not forget old 
Pete Wilson, a Swede living in a sod 
house near by, who came forward and 
told us that we might camp upon his neigh- 
boring lot until the fall, "free gratis," 
and who further said that he would trust 
78 



THE INLAND COUNTEY-THE MINES 

us not to set up a title to the ground ad- 
verse to his. This is but one instance 
of the many kind and generous acts of 
which such men are capable; and it was 
the beginning of a neighborly association 
with this hearty old miner, who contrib- 
uted in many ways toward our agreea- 
ble sojourn at Council City. 

After singling out the least humpy 
spot, the tundra was torn and hacked off 
it until a layer of damp clay earth was 
reached. This was then pretty well lev- 
eled and ditched, in the belief that, by 
giving the sun a good chance at this 
surface, it would become ideally dry, a fine 
place to sleep over. But, though the sun 
was unusually friendly and, at times, in 
the middle of the day, hot, that ground 
remained as damp as ever. We realized 
at last that frozen earth and ice be- 
79 



THE LAND OF KOME 

neath, a barrier to the seepage, made the 
trouble irremediable. Two large tents, one 
made to open into the other, were used, 
respectively, to sleep and to cook and eat 
in, and near the side of this oblong ar- 
rangement was erected the " office " tent. 
A bunk put together and a folding cot, 
picked up at Chenik, kept us off the 
ground at night. It is a tribute to the 
general healthful conditions of that coun- 
try that during the seven weeks we lived 
there, despite the night dampness, which 
seemed at first of ill omen, none of us 
was afflicted with even a cold. For 
warmth, comfort, and protection, a rein- 
deer-skin is invaluable. 

There were perhaps two hundred per- 
sons about Council at that time. Most 
of the miners had made their camps above, 
on the creeks where their claims were 
80 



THE INLAND COUNTRY-THE MINES 

situated, to remain there during the work- 
ing season, though many trudged back 
into town periodically for supplies and 
what not. Of course the number of sa- 
loons, with their dance-hall and gambling 
adjuncts, was entirely disproportionate to 
the population of the place, but their 
proprietors were looking forward to ac- 
tivity in the late fall and winter, when 
mining would cease. A number of 
horses and mules had been brought over- 
land from Nome, small fortunes in them- 
selves. People were continually strag- 
gling in, and, camped as we were on the 
bluff, with that last riffle into Council 
almost at our feet, when a splashing 
sound, intermingled with a bumping noise 
against the stones and with oaths and ex- 
hortations, was heard, one, or all in chorus, 
would exclaim, "Another case of 'mush.'" 
81 



THE LAND OF NOME 

Very soon, and in no modest fashion, 
the signs "Attorneys at Law" and "Sur- 
veyors" were flashed upon the pub- 
lic. There were two other lawyers at 
Council, but no other surveyors. It be- 
came at once necessary to examine the min- 
ing records and learn the system, if any, 
of indexing, with reference to searching 
titles ; and it was in this connection that 

we met Mrs. A , the duly-elected 

recorder for the El Dorado mining dis- 
trict, which district is thirty miles square. 
The wife of the agent there of one of the 
large companies doing business in Alaska, 
she had come with her husband to Coun- 
cil a year before; had spent the long 
winter there; and, commanding the re- 
spect and admiration of the mining com- 
munity, had been elected recorder to 
straighten out and keep honest records 
82 



THE INLAND COUNTRY -THE MINES 

in the books, which hitherto had been in 
the custody of some rather suspicious 
predecessors. Young and good-looking, 
her face was both refined and strong. 
Some of Bret Harte's characters were 
suggested. With great labor and in- 
telligence she had brought order out of 
chaos, and had so indexed her books with 
reference to creeks and individuals as to 
render the w^ork of the searcher compara- 
tively simple. 

A few words concerning mining law 
as applied to Alaska seem now appro- 
priate. The United States laws, which 
control, permit an individual to "locate" 
and hold as many tracts or parcels of 
ground as he desires, each not exceeding, 
however, twenty acres in area^ provided^ 
first, that there be a bona-fide discovery 
of gold; second, that the ground be 
83 



THE LAND OF NOME 

properly staked or marked out; third, 
that at least one hundred dollars' worth 
of work be done on each claim every 
year. It is further provided that the 
miners may organize a district, elect 
their own recorder, and make rules and 
regulations which shall have the force 
of law in so far as they are reasonable 
and not in conflict with the federal stat- 
utes. Many perplexing questions arise, 
however. Our laws are too liberal and 
loose, leaving open too wide the door 
to fraud and blackmail, such as exist 
galore in Alaska, and which could not 
be practised under the carefully drawn 
Canadian statutes. For instance, though 
the law requires that a claim shall be dis- 
tinctly marked or staked, there is no pro- 
vision made as to how it shall be marked, 
nor is it made obligatory that the stakes 
84 



THE INLAND COUNTRY-THE MINES 

shall be maintained. The fraud and con- 
fusion arising from this situation are ag- 
gravated in this barren country, where 
timber is very scarce, and the original 
stakes, for the most part, are made from 
the inadequate scrub willow found along 
the creeks. 

Placer-mining (as contradistinguished 
from quartz) consists in extracting 
loose particles of gold from the allu- 
vial deposits in ancient river-beds. 
Claims which border upon and include 
sections of the present streams, greatly 
reduced in size, are known as " creek " 
claims, and are generally supposed 
to be the richest. There is on every 
creek a " discovery " claim, and all 
the others upon it are known as l^os. 
1, 2, 3, etc., "above" or "below Dis- 
covery," and are so staked and recorded. 
85 



THE LAND OF NOME 

Those claims which are located farther 
up the bank, and which do not embrace 
the stream, are called "bench" claims, 
and are known frequently by the name 
of the wife or daughter of the miner, or 
by any fanciful designation. It was this 
latter class of claims which, up to that 
time ignored or overlooked, m the mid- 
dle of the season were discovered to be 
in many cases richer than the creek 
claims. Many who had left the country, 
disgusted and crying out against the 
laws which permitted a few individuals 
to take up and hold an entire creek, had 
passed over this good ground without 
even prospecting it. On the other hand, 
more persistent miners had secured rich 
claims where apparently there was no 
ground to stake. The twenty-acre claim 
is usually staked out in the shape of a 
86 



THE II^LAND COUISTTRY-THE MINES 

parallelogram 1320 feet by 660 feet. One 
is likely to locate rather more than less 
ground than that to which he is entitled. 
Therefore, some of these canny old boys 
would measure along with their tape- 
lines, spell out a " fraction," and immedi- 
ately seize upon and hold it. 

We were early impressed that there 
was no "fake" about this country. It 
was a continuation of the wonderful for- 
mation which, beginning in the west back 
of Port Clarence, extends eastward and 
back of Nome to the Golovin Bay coun- 
try. Clients began to drop in. In many 
instances they sought free advice; and, 
sometimes, when the conversation had 
reached the legal point, it became neces- 
sary to instruct our callers that, if they de- 
sired to know anything further, our con- 
sultation fee would be exacted. It was 
87 



THE LAT^^D OF NOME 

therefore a case of pay up or move out. 
For Alaska, our law library was imposing 
and complete. Certainly it was the best in 

Council City. The surveyors (T 

working in as chainman) were busy. 
We had been settled only a few days 
when First Lieutenant Offley of the Sev- 
enth United States Infantry, with thirty- 
odd men from St. Michaels, trudged by our 
camp, and it was good to see them. The 
lieutenant had been sent to preserve law 
and order and hold military court pending 
the passing of the country into the hands 
of the civil administration, and the arrival 
at Council of the United States commis- 
sioner, as provided by law. They camped 
in their round tents near the river and be- 
yond the reservation, in our plain view, 
whence the various bugle-calls came to us 
very clearly and marked the time of day, 
88 



THE INLAND COUNTRY -THE MINES 

The world is very small. It soon de- 
veloped that, after the Cuban campaign, 
Lieutenant Offley and my brother, by 
chance, had traveled together in the same 
train from Montauk Point, in the same 
seat, and the lieutenant, vreak from Cuban 
fever, had been assisted over the ferry 
to New York by my brother. Neither 
knowing the name of the other, they next 
met at this jumping-off place. 

Throughout his stay at Council the 
lieutenant performed his duties with an 
ability and conscientiousness which com- 
manded the respect of the community; 
and there was much for him to do which 
was both novel and perplexing — for in- 
stance, the assumption of the judicial 
role. One of the things which tried him 
sorely was the case of a woman physician, 
who had wandered down from the Klon- 
89 



THE LAND OF NOME 

dike country and squatted with her tent 
on a lot which somebody else claimed. 
The case was argued before the lieuten- 
ant, and the decision went against her, 
and very properly. She refused abso- 
lutely to vacate, insisting upon being a 
martyi^; and, though the duty was un- 
pleasant, for the sake of example at least, 
she was put under arrest, with generous 
jail liberties. Finally she was sent down 
the river with a corporal's guard to the 
higher authorities at St. Michaels. 

Within a short time we had as much 
law work as we could do, and very inter- 
esting and novel, and frequently fatiguing, 
it was. In addition to drawing agree- 
ments and deeds, it consisted of prelimi- 
nary interviews in that stately office, fol- 
lowed by long and laborious walks for 
many miles through the timber, up and 
90 



THE INLAND COUNTRY-THE MIKES 

down mountainous hills, over tundra, and 
through streams, to the mines on the 
creeks beyond, there to examine stakes, 
witnesses, and liars. Frequently, before 
starting back, we would be invited to eat 
with the men, and a fine lot they were as 
a rule. Then the case had to be pre- 
sented before the lieutenant and argued, 
with the assistance of mining-law quota- 
tions and diagrams. In many instances 
the lieutenant would make a personal in- 
spection of the property in dispute. If 
one side appeared to be clearly in the 
right, the other party would be ordered 
off the premises; if it seemed to be an 
honest contention, and there was merit on 
both sides, the disputed ground would be 
tied up, a dead-line drawn, and soldiers 
camped there to see that neither party 
mined the contested territory. Either 
91 



THE LAND OF NOME 

party, if dissatisfied, might appeal to the 
federal court then established at Nome. 
But we were hearing strange tales about 
that court. There was a persistent rumor 
that it was only the instrument of a great 
scheme to confiscate the rich mines. There 
was said to be a large corporation organ- 
ized in the East, with influential political 
backing, whose guiding genius, on the flim- 
siest of pretexts, in violation of all the rules 
of legal procedure, and virtually under no 
bonds, was being repeatedly appointed by 
this court receiver of these mines. 

Through a tip from a client for whom 
we had done some legal and surveying 
work, my brother and I secured a fraction 
of mining ground on Mel sing Creek, 
which was staked, surveyed, and recorded 
as the "Eli Fi^action." We four staked 
out also an association claim of eighty 
92 



THE INLAND COUNTRY-THE MINES 

acres on a bench of Ophir Creek, which 
claim is called the "Rajah," and we 
secm^ed other interests farther up on 
Ophir Creek. As a favor to friends, we 
would be wilhng to sell out our mining 
interests for a million dollars cash ! 

In placer-mining the " pay dirt " (usu- 
ally found near bed-rock) is shoveled 
into long, narrow boxes called " sluices," 
varying in length, at the bottom of which 
are small cross-pieces of wood (" rifiSes "), 
or copper plates, or mercury, devised to 
catch the gold. The creek is diverted so 
as to send a stream of water into the 
" head " of the sluice-boxes, and the gold, 
by virtue of its greater specific gravity, 
is caught by one or several of the con- 
trivances — the stones, gravel, and dirt 
being carried by the current out of the 
boxes, and constituting the "tailings." 
93 



THE LAND OF NOME 

After a certain number of hours' "run," 
the water is temporarily diverted, and the 
"clean-up" takes place; that is, the 
sluice-boxes are cleaned out, and the 
gold separated from the black sand and 
iron substances which usually remain 
with it. Water, therefore, is absolutely 
essential. In 1900, at first, the general 
complaint was "no water," although 
later, when the heavy rains came, it was 
"too much water." Placer-mining is a 
delicate and uncertain business, and is 
very hard work. Gold is not "picked 
up" anywhere, and mother earth yields 
her treasure very stubbornly. The gold 
of this country consists mainly of fine 
particles or " dust," and, compared with 
the Klondike, but few nuggets are found. 
It is, however, purer than the Klondike 
gold, and assays higher. 
94 



THE INLAND COUNTRY -THE MINES 

One day in August, with a large pack, 
and followed by an unattractive but de- 
voted-looking dog, there came into Coun- 
cil F 5 whom we had known on the 

Lane, He was only twenty-two years 
old, but financial stress had compelled 
him to leave his university prematurely; 
and he had been among the first to cross 
the Chilkoot Pass and undergo the rigors 
of the Klondike. Late in the season of 
1899 he had come from the Klondike to 
Nome, and had acquired, as he believed, 
some valuable interests there, which he 
had been obliged to intrust to a partner, as 
he was carried out from Nome in the fall 
more dead than alive with typhoid. Re- 
turning the next year, he learned that his 
partner had robbed hun, and that all that 
remained was this dog. So, with his pack 
and his dog, and the aid of a compass, 
95 



THE LAND OF NOME 

he had walked over the mountains and 
tundra from Nome to Council, — sleeping, 
of course, in the open air and upon the 
ground, — in quest of employment on one 
of the Wild Goose properties, " JSTo. 15 
on Ophir." And he was rather a delicate- 
looking fellow. He dined with us, and 
we extended to him the hospitality of our 
kitchen floor for the night, for which he 
was very grateful. I^otwith standing his 

continued ill fortune, F seemed to be 

in first-rate spirits. He recited a verse 
which he had composed, after "Break, 
break, break," etc., which began thus : 

'^ Break, broke, bust, on the ruby sands of Nome, 
Break, broke, bust— three thousand miles from 

home ! '^ 

The way he got it off caused general 

laughter. He endured for two weeks 

96 



THE INLAND COUNTEY-THE MINES 

work which very few strong men can 
keep up, working on the ten-hour night 
shift shoveling frozen ground up and into 
a sluice-box; and then, pretty well used 
up, but with enough money to take him 
home, he departed for ISTome, this time by 
way of the river, saying that he hoped to 
return next spring. Certainly pluck was 
not lacking in his make-up. 

There is no game in this country to 
speak of. Occasionally, however, one 
would scare up a covey of ptarmigan or 
white grouse, and of course there were 
fish in the stream. The government re- 
cently imported into northern Alaska 
some reindeer with Laplanders to care 
for them, and there are scattered reindeer- 
stations. But none of these animals 
were seen. 

Very pretty wild flowers, many of 
97 



THE LAND OF NOME 

which I had never seen before, grow out 
of the tundra. I have gathered as many 
as ten different species within a quarter 
of a mile of our camp. In places blue- 
berries grew thick, and salmon-berries 
were numerous. 

Once in a while a letter of compara- 
tively ancient date, passed on from !N'ome 
to some traveler, would reach us ^ — a great 
treat indeed. Toward the end of August 
we learned the result of the Yale-Har- 
vard race, which had been rowed the end 
of June. Miners would come around and 
ask for the loan of a paper or novel — 
any old thing would do. 

Soon after we had become settled at 
Council, with intermittent fair weather, it 
rained almost daily, the rain coming up 
and clearing off suddenly; and one soon 
grew accustomed to the peculiarities of 
98 



THE INLAND COUNTRY-THE MINES 

the climate. It was a great relief to have 
the nights begin to darken. After the 
middle of August they became quite 
dark, and, at the same time, we not in- 
frequently found in the morning a layer 
of thin ice in the buckets of water. 

On August 25 T left us, having 

received bad news from home; and Sep- 
tember 1, to the regret of all, the military 
departed, as the arrival of the commis- 
sioner for the Council City district was 
daily expected, and presumably there 
would be no further need of the soldiers. 
A petition, addressed to the general com- 
manding, seeking the retention of the 
military throughout the winter, was got- 
ten up and freely signed, but fear of the 
friction which, under such circmnstances, 
is likely to exist between the civil and mil- 
itary authorities, rendered it of no avail. 
L.c: . 99 



THE LAND OF I^OME 

About September 1, a heavy storm with 
a driving rain set in, which continued 
with no moderation until the 8th of the 
month. Dams were washed away, and 
mining operations ceased. It seemed at 
times impossible that the tents could stand 
up against the wind, or that the canvas 
could longer keep out the heavy rain. 
The " boulevards " of Council were in a 
very sorry condition. It was very dismal 
comfort those days. The ^euMuk had 
become a young Mississippi, and the bar 
of the stream was now entirely covered. 
The wind blew furiously up the stream ; 
and it was almost an unbelievable sight 
to behold one day a freighter sailing 
slowly and surely, impelled alone by the 
favoring wind, up the stream and over 
that riffle which hitherto had been the 
heartbreaker. 

100 



THE INLAND COUNTEY-THE MINES 

In view of this storm and the early 
approaching winter, the mining season 
seemed to have ended, and we decided to 
quit for Nome and home on the next fa- 
vorable day, and began to make ready 

accordingly. C had decided that he 

would spend the winter at Council, and I 
determined to return in the following 
spring. A very good log cabin, nearing 
completion, which Avould answer for 

C 's residence and the firm's office, 

was leased, and the bulk of our general 
outfit moved into it. It was economy for 

C to come with us to ISTome to lay 

in his winter supplies. Sugar was sell- 
ing at Council for 35 cents a pound ; cof- 
fee 75 cents; flour |7.50 a sack; kero- 
sene |1.50 a gallon, etc. 

Sunday morning, September 9, break- 
ing fair and favorable, burdened with 
101 



THE LAND OF NOME 

only a few essentials, we set out in 
the Mush-on at half-past seven o'clock. 
How different it was from coming up! 
The boat seemed at times fairly to fly 
along, borne by the current and assisted 
by the oars. At a sudden turn we were 
hailed by some freighters, and later by 
the Arctic Bird^ which, taking advan- 
tage of the sudden rise of the streams, 
was bringing up some heavy machinery. 
The former handed over to us some home 
letters, and a batch of mail from the lat- 
ter, well protected, was thrown at us 
and picked up safely out of the river. 
This mail added to the general gaiety of 
the situation. At half-past twelve a short 
stop was made at White Mountain to pay 
our respects to friends there; and then 
we pushed on, rowing more as the I'iver 
became broader and the current less 
102 



THE INLAND COUNTRY-THE MINES 

swift. Taking the wi'ong fork at the 
delta of Fish River, it looked for a while 
as if we should be stranded on the mud- 
flats and obliged to return to the proper 
channel; but by getting out and pulling 
the boat, which drew practically no water, 
we soon were well off, wading into the 
Golovin Bay. Then, with the aid of a bit 
of canvas, the favorable wind, and our 
oars, we reached Chenik at six o'clock in 
the evening, having covered a distance in 
ten and a half hours which had required 
four days in the ascent. I believe that is 
the record time. Fortunately, it was not 
necessary to wait for means of transporta- 
tion to ^ome, as the Elmore^ a miserable 
little tub, sailed from Chenik that night. 
The fellow-passengers were a tough lot of 
men and women ; and all camped together 
very informally that night on the floor of 
103 



THE LAND OF NOME 

the cabin. The storm came up again. 
It was very rough, and in consequence it 
was a miserable, sick crowd. Having 
stopped at Topkok for some additional 
passengers, who came aboard with satchels 
of gold-dust, the Elmore was off ^ome 
at six o'clock the following evening, bob- 
bing like a cork in the now fast increas- 
ing storm. After some difficulty ii 
getting into it, in truly a very thrilling 
fashion, we were rowed ashore in a life- 
boat and artistically beached through the 
surf, a feat which could be performed 
only by that crew of skilful Swedes. 



104 



McKElSrZIE AT WOEK-THE STORM- 
THE UNITED STATES COURT 
OF APPEALS 




^57JliOME had become more sub- 
stantial in appearance, — there 
were fewer tents and more 
buildings, — but it was even 
more unsightly now that the rain had 
made the streets a perfect sea of mud, 
knee-deep in most places. The Wild 
Goose Company's railroad had been laid, 
and was in successful operation. On all 
sides was manifest the hustling genius of 
the American people. We put up at a 
remarkably promising place. The Golden 
Gate Hotel; and, after a long unac- 
105 



THE LAND OF K^OME 

qiiaintance with such a luxury, rested 
between sheets, and gave our things a 
chance to dry. We were lucky to have 
caught the Elmore^ for otherwise it 
would have meant detention at Chenik 
for a week, awaiting an abatement of the 
storm. It was a pleasure to see some of 
our friends again, and very interesting to 
learn the news and latest developments. 
The story of the wonderful strike of gold 
at Kougarok and Gold Run, back of 
Port Clarence, was corroborated, and, 
generally, the mine-owners said that the 
country was richer than they had ever 
dreamed it to be. The receivership story 
was also very generally confirmed. 
Undoubtedly there then existed in the 
civil administration of the jN^ome country 
as corrupt a ring of wholesale robbery 
and blackmail as one can imagine. 
106 



MoKENZIE AT WORK 

The following account may better 
enable the reader to appreciate the mag- 
nificence of the scheme of confiscation 
which at this time was in a prosperous 
state of realization. 

There had been organized in the city 
of New York, under the laws of Arizona, 
with a capital stock of fifteen million 
dollars, The Alaska Gold Mining Com- 
pany, of which Alexander Mclvenzie, a 
man of political influence, well known in the 
Dakotas, was the chief promoter and the 
owner of a majority of the stock. He had 
placed a portion of the remainder where 
he believed it would stand him in good 
stead. The main assets of this company 
consisted of "jumpers'" claims to rich 
mining property near Nome, principally 
situated on Anvil Creek — claims which, 
having already been taken or " located," 
107 



THE LAKD OF NOME 

had been "jumped" or "relocated" by 
certain individuals on some of the pre- 
texts suggested by the looseness of our 
mining laws, and which in a new country 
so frequently constitute a species of legal 
blackmail. These claims, for the most 
part, had been purchased from the origi- 
nal owners by the Wild Goose and the 
Pioneer Mining companies, large corpora- 
tions which had been formed to operate 
them, and other claims, on a very large 
scale, and which, with immense equip- 
ment at hand for future operations, were 
already, in the early season of 1900, en- 
gaged in taking out the gold in great 
quantities. 

In company and on the same vessel 

with McKenzie, Judge Noyes arrived at 

^ome on the nineteenth day of July, 

1900, and (to use the language of the 

108 



Mckenzie at woek 

Circuit Court of Appeals in the McKen- 
zie contempt cases) " on Monday, July 23, 
before the court was organized and be- 
fore the filing of any paper of any char- 
acter with the clerk of the court, 
[McKenzie] was appointed by Judge 
]^oyes receiver of at least four of the 
richest claims in the district of Nome, upon 
complaints made by persons the interest 
therein of at least one of whom had there- 
tofore been acquired by the receiver's 
corporation, the Alaska Gold Mining 
Company." And this, too, upon papers 
grossly inadequate, without notification 
to the parties in possession, or an oppor- 
tunity for them to be heard, and, gener- 
ally, in total disregard of the necessities 
of the situation and legal precedent. 
The orders appointing McKenzie receiver 
of these claims directed him to take im- 
109 



THE LAND OF NOME 

mediate possession thereof; to manage 
and work the same; to preserve the gold 
and dispose of it subject to the further 
orders of the court; and expressly en- 
joined the persons then in possession from 
in any manner interfering with the mining 
of the claims by the receiver. By a sub- 
sequent order, and in the very teeth of 
the express prohibitory provision of the 
statute under which the court was created, 
Judge Noyes further ordered that the 
receiver take possession of, and that there 
be delivered to him, all personal property 
of every sort and description on one of 
these claims and in any way appertaining 
thereto. The receiver's bond in each case 
was fixed at only five thousand dollars, 
though at least one of these claims was 
then yielding about fifteen thousand dol- 
lars a dayl 

110 



Mckenzie at m^okk 

Thereupon, several of the parties thus 
held up by this highway procedure, upon 
proof and affidavits, moved the court to 
vacate these orders, which applications 
were denied, as were the petitions to the 
court for the allowance of an appeal from 
its orders granting the injunctions and 
appointing the receiver, the court holding 
that its orders were not appealable, and, 
in effect, that its jurisdiction in the mat- 
ter was exclusive. 

Upon the refusal of the court to allow 
an appeal, the Wild Goose and Pioneer 
Mining companies, which were repre- 
sented by able counsel, secretly de- 
spatched to San Francisco, on a fast 
vessel, a special messenger bearing papers 
and affidavits disclosing the record of the 
court at Nome, upon which to base appli- 
cation to the appellate court, the United 
111 



THE LAND OF NOME 

States Circuit Court of Appeals for the 
Ninth Circuit, for allowance of appeals 
and writs of supersedeas. This writ, 
which, in effect, nullifies the proceedings 
of the court below pending the determina- 
tion of the appeal which it, the appellate 
court, has allowed, was granted in the 
Wild Goose cases by Judge Morrow, upon 
the giving of proper bonds. 

Meanwhile the receiver business was 
in full swing, and McKenzie became 
known near and far as the " King of Re- 
ceivers," or the "Big One." After a 
while, when the thing was becoming too 
notorious, the court evinced a certain deli- 
cacy of feeling by bestowing sundry re- 
ceiverships upon selected friends of Mc- 
Kenzie, instead of handing them all over 
to the chief. Many mine-owners did not 
attempt to develop their ground, fearful 
112 



THE STOKM 

lest, it proving rich, the receivership 
jurisdiction would be thereto extended. 
Charges and countercharges of bribery 
and corruption were rife, and the fight 
between the attorneys for the ousted 
parties and the " ring " became strenuous 
and embittered. 

In the midst of the storm above referred 
to, — on the 14th of September, — an 
exciting rumor spread throughout the 
town that the writs from the appellate 
court had arrived ; and this proved to be 
the fact. The Nome dailies (three of 
them) came out with such head-lines as 
"McKenzie Thrown out of His Job," 
"Death-blow to the New York Eing," 
and printed in full the writ commanding 
a stay of operations and a return of the 
property. 

But McKenzie did not proceed to obey 
113 



THE LAND OF NOME 

the mandates of the higher court, nor did 
Judge ISToyes order him so to do, though 
they both had been served with all the 
requisite papers. 

With the knowledge that the Circuit 
Court of Appeals was back of them, the 
Wild Goose people took possession of 
their mines. McKenzie, acting under the 
kind of legal advice that he wanted, main- 
tained that the writs were irregular and 
void, and absolutely refused to deliver up 
the gold-dust which he had mined. Judge 
Noyes made an order merely staying all 
proceedings in his court, and refused to 
make orders compelling McKenzie to 
obey the writs and deliver the gold-dust 
to the appellants. 

It became known that the receiver 
would attempt to withdraw gold-dust 
which had been deposited in the vaults of 
114 



THE STORM 

the Alaska Banking and Safe Deposit 
Company; and when McKenzie, in com- 
pany with one of his " friends," made the 
attempt, he found himself surrounded by 
a detachment of the military and a num- 
ber of the parties interested, together with 
their attorneys. As he was about to walk 
out of the building, an attorney stepped 
forward and stopped him, causing that 
remarkable person for the first time to 
lose his head and nerve. It looked for 
a moment as if there might be some 
gun-play, but this, fortunately, was 
avoided. All this happened when the 
storm was at its height, the miserable 
streets of the hybrid " city " knee-deep in 
mud, and when, without the semblance of 
a harbor, and open to the clear sweep and 
fierce attack of the Arctic gale, entire 
sections of the place were under water, 
115 



THE LAISTD OF NOME 

and houses and wreckage generally drift- 
ing about. It was an excellent back- 
ground for a dramatic incident. 

The next step, therefore, was to proceed 
against McKenzie for contempt of court. 
The time was very short; for communi- 
cation with that country ceases with the 
freezing of the sea, the latter part of 
October, and the distance to the appellate 
court and return is about seven thousand 
miles. At the last moment, just before 
we sailed, Samuel Knight (Yale, '87), 
who, in behalf of the Wild Goose Com- 
pany, had been fighting the ring with 
great aggressiveness and skill, gave me, 
for his firm in San Francisco, the papers 
on which to base proceedings for con- 
tempt of court and arrest. 

The storm and rain continued with un- 
abated fury. It was impossible to get 
116 



THE STOEM 

away. All the steamers had either put 
to sea or sought for shelter the lee of 
Sledge Island, to the northwest, and the 
shore was fast becoming a scene of 
wreckage indescribable. Tugs, lighters, 
floating piers, and all small craft lay 
tossed upon the beach. The sea was 
rising higher all the time, and soon build- 
ings were washed away, and the front 
and lower part of the town were under 
water. All machinery which had rested 
upon the beach was buried in the sand. 
The entire sand-spit where we had first 
camped was washed by the surf. Lum- 
ber in great piles was strewn all along 
the water-front, and there were general 
loot and consequent drunkenness. The 
saying that the " Bering Sea is the grave- 
yard of the Pacific" seemed verified. 
Certainly it was the most destructive 
117 



THE LAND OF NOME 

and long-continued storm within my 
knowledge. 

It was during this waiting period that 

we quite unexpectedly ran across V 

and R . They had, it seemed, gone 

northwest in their boat for about thirty 
miles and tried the beach, with but little 
success. Then, having, as they believed, 
good infoiTQation as to the rich strike 
which had been made at Bristol Bay, 
five or six hundred miles to the south, 
they had joined a party and gone thither 
in the small sailing-schooner which now 
lay high and dry upon the beach. Caught 
by storms either way, their experiences 
were of the hair-raising order, and it was 
only through the great skill and coolness 
of the captain and the mate that they 
were there to tell the tale. Bristol Bay 
had proved to be a fake, so far as gold 
118 



THE STORM 

was concerned. But V said that the 

streams were simply red with salmon, and 
that they found many walruses dead upon 
the shore, which probably, wounded by 
the natives, had come there to die. He 
brought to us a splendid pair of their 
ivory tusks, in which I have a special 
pride. Although he plainly showed the 
effects of his hardships, his cheerful 
spunt was unbroken, although the thought 
of having to return unsuccessful, but with 
hardly a fair trial, hurt his sense of pride. 
We told hun of the Council City country, 
and it was suggested that he go back and 

winter with C , which proposition was 

quickly accepted. 

We dined once for experiment at the 
Cafe de Paris, a very clean and dainty- 
looking restaurant, quite incongruous 
with its surroundings. This was fre- 
119 



THE LAND OF NOME 

quented by some of the French " counts," 
German "barons," and persons "repre- 
senting capital in the East," for all sorts 
and conditions were to be met at this 
motley Nome. Eeally, our general ap- 
parel was quite out of place. The pro- 
prietor seemed the gentleman. He said 
that he came from New York, and that 
his chef was from the Cafe Martin. When 
we remarked that we had eaten at the 
Cafe Martin, with a French gesture of 
delight, he exclaimed, "Zen zere ees 
nussing more to be said! " Most of the 
things were very good, but we ordered 
beefsteak, about which we used to talk 
at Council. That portion of the menu 
was very well disguised. As an Alaskan 
friend of mine once remarked on a simi- 
lar occasion, it was " so tough that you 
could n't stick a fork in the gravy." 
X20 



THE COURT OF APPEALS 

On September 17 the storm finally 
abated, and, after an earnest "good-by 

and good luck" to C , my brother 

and I were rowed out to the big ship 
Tacoma, We left many behind who 
would have given their eye-teeth to be 
in our boots. It seemed almost too good 
to be true that we should be upon that 
stanch vessel, in good health, and with 
the near prospect of enjoyuig the delights 
of a home-coming. As is frequently the 
case when one has been counting the days 
which are to lead up to an anticipated 
pleasure, a certain apprehension that some 
mishap might occur to delay departure 
had been felt by us during these last days 
'n Alaska. The Tacoma^ which before 
the Nome excitement had been engaged 
in the China trade, was officered by Scots- 
men and Englishmen and manned by 
121 



THE LAND OF NOME 

Chinamen. Big and steady, with roomy 
decks, she was crowded to the limit of 
her passenger accommodations. Though 
the majority of the passengers had been 
unsuccessful, the fact of going home 
made all light-hearted and good-natured. 
One of the first persons I saw was our 
Pullman porter friend, who greeted us 
grinning and deferentially, though we 
were still in that wholesome atmosphere 
where all men meet on equal terms and 
no one is better than the other until he 
proves it so. He said that he had been 
lucky in getting hold of a claim, and 
drew from his pocket a good- sized bottle 
pretty well filled with gold-dust. I 
learned further that he would " railroad " 
during the winter and return in the spring 
to Nome, having left behind a "good 
partner " whom he had so tied up that it 
122 



THE COUET OF APPEALS 

would be impossible to be defrauded 1 I 
was flattered to know that on the occasion 
of his getting into a "jack-pot" (some 
trouble) he had hunted Nome after me 
for legal advice. He had many opportu- 
nities to get into " trouble " during the 
voyage home, as he gambled all the time. 
Another acquaintance discovered on the 
ship was the little German pioneer " Cap- 
tain Cook." We found him unkempt 
and disheveled, Rip Yan Winkle-like, 
an object of commiseration, seated where 
he had been led. The old fellow was 
a very sick man, with dropsy. Quite 
friendless, he was unconscious of his 
surroundings, and looked up in a dazed, 
hopeless way when spoken to. It seemed 
as if he might not return alive to that 
" leetle wife in Kansas City." But later, 
he was taken out upon the deck and 
123 



THE LAND OF NOME 

seated in the sun, which did him good; 
for one day as I passed he recognized me 
with a bright look, and inquired for my 
"brudder." It is to be hoped that this 
old man, who patiently had endured so 
much, safely reached his home with his 
gold, and received the welcome he de- 
served. 

With bright, sunny weather after the 
storm, the Tacoma^ not stopping to coal 
at Dutch Harbor, steamed through Uni- 
mak Pass, and, now in the Pacific, headed 
for Seattle over calm seas. Spending one 
beautiful day skirting the shore of pic- 
turesque Vancouver Island, and passing 
through the Strait of Juan de Fuca into 
that incomparable inland body of water, 
Puget Sound, the Tacoma reached Seattle 
on September 27, after a voyage of ten 
days. Thence to San Francisco we jour- 
124 



THE COURT OF APPEALS 

neyed by rail over the majestic route 
which traverses the base of Mount Shasta. 
Immediately upon arriving in San Fran- 
cisco the papers were delivered to the 
lawyers. The day following, the Circuit 
Court of Appeals, with great astonish- 
ment, learned in what respect its man- 
dates had been held; and, shortly after- 
ward, two deputy United States marshals 
were despatched to Nome on one of the 
last vessels sailing for that port. Thwart- 
ing the ring by reaching Nome before 
the ice had closed communication with the 
outside world, they duly arrested the re- 
ceiver and brought him before the court 
in San Francisco whose orders he had 
deliberately defied. Knight has since 
told me of his exciting night escape from 
Nome in a launch, and of his being picked 
up at sea by a steamer, as prearranged; 
125 



THE LAND OF NOME 

for, fearful of the damaging evidence 
which he had accumulated, the ring did 
its utmost to keep him fi'om getting 
away, employing as a means to this end 
the pretext " contempt of court " ! 

The trial of the contempt cases at San 
Francisco was long and hard-fought by 
both sides. McKenzie has had an array 
of able champions at every stage of the 
proceedings. Application to the United 
States Supreme Court was made in his 
behalf to oust the Circuit Court of Ap- 
peals of its jurisdiction to try these cases, 
but the application was denied. 

On the eleventh day of February, 1901, 
the Circuit Court of Appeals at San 
Francisco filed its opmion and judgment 
in these contempt cases. The long and 
able opinion delivered by Judge Ross 
covers the entire history of the Wild 
126 



THE COURT OF APPEALS 

GcK)se litigation, and incidentally refers 
to Mr. McKenzie's relations with the 
Alaska Gold Mining Company. After 
referring to and commenting upon the 
various proceedings, which are sum- 
marized as "this shocking record," and 
disposing of the technical points raised 
by the receiver's counsel, the Court say : 
" The circumstances attending the ap- 
pointment of the receiver in these cases, 
however, and his conduct after as well as 
before the appointment, as shown by the 
record and evidence, so far from impress- 
ing us with the sincerity of the pretension 
that his refusal to obey the writs issued 
out of this court was based upon the ad- 
vice of his counsel that they were void, 
satisfy us that it was intentional and de- 
liberate, and in furtherance of the high- 
handed and grossly illegal proceedings 
127 



THE LAND OF NOME 

initiated almost as soon as Judge Noyes 
and McKenzie had set foot on Alaskan 
territory at Nome, and which may be 
safely said to have no parallel in the 
jurisprudence of this country. And it 
speaks well for the good, sober sense of 
the people gathered on that remote and 
barren shore that they depended solely 
upon the courts for the correction of the 
wrongs thus perpetrated among and 
against them, which always may be de- 
pended upon to right, sooner or later, 
wrongs properly brought before them." 
It is then adjudged that the receiver did 
commit contempts of court, and that for 
the said contempts he be imprisoned in 
the county jail of the county of Alameda, 
California, for the period of one year. 
In conclusion, "the marshal will execute 
this judgment forthwith." 
128 



THE COTJET OF APPEALS 

In view of this deliberate adjudication 
and severe arraignment by a federal 
court of rank next to the highest tribunal 
of the United States, and considering also 
the earnest efforts made at "Washington 
and the demands of the Pacific coast 
newspapers for the removal of the weak 
and unscrupulous judge who had mani- 
festly served as the tool of Alexander 
McKenzie, his recently dethroned re- 
ceiver, it was natural to suppose that 
effective measures would at once be taken 
to rectify so great an error as his appoint- 
ment had proved to be. But, strange 
to say, this reasonable expectation was 
not verified. 

In the United States Senate, on the 

26th of February, 1901, an attempt was 

made to exonerate Messrs. McKenzie and 

Noyes. Senator Hansbrough of North 

129 



THE LAND OF NOME 

Dakota characterized the former as "in 
every respect an honorable and respon- 
sible man," and read a letter which he 
had received from Judge !N^oyes, in which 
the latter elaborately declaims how honest 
and upright he is and always has been. 
Senator Pettigrew of South Dakota cham- 
pioned McKenzie as a man of " character," 
and eulogized I^oyes as " the peer of any 
man who sits upon the bench in any State 
or Territory in the Union." But Senator 
Stewart gave the whole affair a very 
thorough airing, and caused to be printed 
in the " Congressional Record " the com- 
plete history of the receivership proceed- 
ings above set forth, together Avith the 
opinion and judgment of the Circuit 
Court of Appeals. 

One of the last official acts of Attorney- 
General Griggs was the preparation and 
130 



THE COUET OF APPEALS 

transmission of charges against Judge 
IS'oyes, which reached their destination 
in June, 1901; and as only a reply with 
explanations was required, ]N^oyes had a 
lease of official life during the mining 
season of 1901. His answer to the 
charges preferred against him was in the 
nature of a general denial, and a justifi- 
cation of his conduct in every respect. 

Despite, however, its various handicaps, 
the Nome country, it is estimated, yielded 
in the year 1900 between five and six mil- 
lion dollars in gold — almost as much as 
was paid to Russia for Alaska in 1867. 

Thus far no well-defined quartz ledges 
have been discovered, but it is not impos- 
sible that such may yet be found. Once 
on a steady basis, it will from year to 
year, like the Klondike, increase its 
output until, finally deprived of its only 
131 



THE LAND OF NOME 

attraction and drained of its sole asset, 
it shall again assume the dreary, uninhab- 
ited state in which it was discovered. 

Lieutenant Jarvis estimates that, in ad- 
dition to the two thousand who wintered 
there, eighteen thousand people were at 
]S'ome in the summer of 1900. Probably 
six thousand remained in the country 
throughout the following winter, well 
provided for, as the government at the 
close of the mining season transported the 
remaining needy and destitute. 

Before communication with the outside 
world closed with the freezing of the sea, 

about the 1st of November, C got 

out a letter which informed me of his safe 
arrival at Council and his settling down 
in the new quarters. It seems that not 
enough was found of the Mush-on at 
Chenik to make a toothpick. At a 
132 



THE COURT OF APPEALS 

meeting of the "city fathers" at Coun- 
cil the nomination for president of the 
Town-site Organization had been extended 

to C 5 which he said he had at first de- 

chned with becoming modesty ; but, finally, 
under pressure, and as a " public duty," 
he had graciously yielded and been duly 
elected. This news of my partner's ac- 
cession to so high a dignity rather led me 
to indulge an expectation that, upon my 
return, I might be received with civic 
honors. 



133 



PART II 

1901 




VI 

THE DANGERS OF BERING SEA— 
A DISMAL OUTLOOK 

'HE spring of 1901, unlike its 
immediate predecessor, did 
not bring forth general or 
even newspaper excitement 
about Nome and northwest Alaska, and 
the average observer of events, even in 
cities so closely in touch as San Francisco 
and Seattle, might have been warranted 
in concluding that the remarkable stories 
of gold in this latest El Dorado were but 
fairy tales, and that another bubble had 
burst. But this was very far from the 
truth. On the contrary, nearly as many 
137 



THE LAND OF NOME 

vessels as the year before, and better 
ones, were scheduled to sail for Nome; 
more freight and horses were being 
shipped thither; and in the northward 
movement there was a confident and le- 
gitimate air which signified genuine belief 
in the country and ample capital to back 
it up. 

The dreadful and discouraging reports 
spread during the preceding season by 
quickly-returned, faint-hearted fortune- 
hunters had served a useful purpose in 
very largely eluninating the riffraff and 
rabble which had, in great measure, con- 
tributed to make Nome in 1900 unsavory 
and unsafe. This year, as last, accom- 
modations on the first sailings were pur- 
chased at a premium, or could not be 
had at all. Nearly every passenger had 
some tangible proposition in view, and, 
138 



THE DANGERS OF BERING SEA 

whether or not it proved successful, put 
himself on record as a firm believer in 
the wonderful hidden wealth of the coun- 
try whither he was bound. 

Sailing from San Francisco June 1, 
and stopping two days en route at Seattle, 
the 8t Paul^ after an uneventful and sat- 
isfactory voyage, on the 16th of the month 
halted on her long way at Unalaska. I 
was fortunate in sharing my narrow 
cabin accommodations with two good 

men — W , a man of the world, with 

mining interests in Alaska and possessed 
of a lively sense of humor; the other, a 
very gentlemanly and well-educated 
" knight of the green table," who begged 
pardon whenever he had occasion to 
enter our common quarters. When I 
first visited the state-room, to appropriate, 
if possible, the best places for my belong- 
139 



THE LAKD OF NOME 

ings, a bouquet of fragrant sweet-peas 
thriving in the basin interrogated me as 
to whether I had not made a mistake. 

Later, "W explained that one of his 

friends, in the bibulous enthusiasm of 
farewell amenities, on the way to the 
ship had purchased this beautiful but 
somewhat embarrassingly inappropriate 
gift, and had thrust it upon him. It soon 
adorned the saloon of the ship. 

Of course, the St Paul carried an as- 
sortment of curious and remarkable peo- 
ple — not so diversified a lot as inflicted 
the Lane a year ago ; there was a much 
higher average of respectability. First 
of all, it was pleasant to know that mem- 
bers of the " nobility " were with us — 
it gave us a " tone," so to speak. They 
included a couple of very pronounced 
Englishmen, a Russian count, and a trio 
140 



THE DANGERS OF BERING SEA 

of Frenchmen, one of whom, an inoffen- 
sive little fellow, monoeled and dressed 
to kill, was also a real live count. The 
combination lived in style and moderate 
hilarity in the owner's room, and were 
scheduled to investigate their large min- 
ing interests in Alaska. Then there 
was a great, strapping hulk of a man, 
who wore a beard, long black hair which 
curled down over his coat collar, and a 
benign smile; and who had a cheery word 
for every one — of the type Munyon. He 
was reported to be the president of a 
mining company also having "large in- 
terests in Alaska," but he was dubbed 
the " Divine Healer," and was cursed out 
generally. As a rule, it is a safe pre- 
caution to steer clear of individuals who 
talk about their " large mining interests 
in Alaska" or who are "representing 
141 



THE LAND OF NOME 

capital in the East." A tall, spare man, 
who bore the marks of having been shot 
through the cheek, was pointed out to me 
as one of the veterans of Alaska, and the 
one who, in the palmy days of the Nome 
beach, with a simple hand-" rocker" and 
two assistants, in twelve hours' work had 
made the record, by taking from the ruby 
sands one hundred and twenty-seven 
ounces of gold, or something over a thou- 
sand dollars' worth. This I verified later. 
We had with us also "Blanche La- 
monte," the actress, of Klondike fame, 
and several other "fairies" and minor 
stars who had decided to add luster to 
histrionic art at Nome. It was a series 
of "concerts" which brought out, as it 
were, the pieces de resistance. These de- 
lightful affairs — "to cheer us on our 
long voyage " — were due mainly to the 
142 



THE DANGERS OF BEEING SEA 

efforts of a tall, angular woman with 
short gray hair, who hailed from New 
York, with a down-East twang, and who, 
representing some newspaper, wanted a 
little spice for her article. She pos- 
sessed, it was said, some musical attain- 
ments, and had engineered a successful 
entertaimnent the year before in so criti- 
cal a metropolis as Nome. At any rate, 
she was the self-appointed " ship's favor- 
ite," and she coidd manage to get a good 
deal of animation from a little box-organ. 
Though not a nightingale, this life of the 
ship would sing a few songs of her " own 
composition," and playfully insist that 
we " all join in the chorus " ; and, on one 
occasion, apropos of nothing whatever, 
she announced that she was a mining 
broker and would be happy to market 
properties for the " boys." 
143 



THE LAKD OF NOME 

I remember also two big, husky, good- 
looking miners, who used to interrogate 
me about getting up the streams to and 
above Council City. They had a griev- 
ance against their "disagreeable" cabin- 
mate. This was a Swedish missionary; 
and the complaint was made not because 
he was so " damned religious," but be- 
cause he was unsociable — would n't 
enter into the spirit of things. For in- 
stance, when asked whether he was going 
to Nome, his only reply was that his 
ticket didn't read that way. Perhaps 
the missionary was canny in not allowing 
his room-mates too much leeway. And 
there were others. 

As we approached the now familiar 

bold and bleak topography of Unalaska, 

it was apparent that the rumors of late 

ice in Bering Sea were well founded. 

144 



THE DANGEKS OF BEEING SEA 

The hills and slopes bore a good deal 
more snow than a year ago, and the at- 
mosphere was more chill. There re- 
mained in the harbor but few vessels. 
The majority of the fleet had already 
forged into Bering Sea; but the Jeannie^ 
a steam- whaler, specially fitted to " buck " 
the ice, was the only vessel known to 
have discharged its passengers and freight 
at ]N'ome. This had been accomplished 
on the ice, during the latter part of May, 
two miles from the beach, the freight at 
great expense having been transferred 
ashore by dog-teams. We remained at 
Unalaska over Sunday, and that evening 
a goodly number of the ship's company 
attended song services at the Jesse Lee 
Home. This institution cares for and 
tries to make good men and women of 
the outcast and half-breed children who 
145 



THE LAND OF NOME 

are gathered in from various Aleutian 
Islands. It is a good cause, well con- 
ducted. The poor little isolated waifs 
closed the exercises by singing " God be 
with You till We Meet Again," and it 
was a seriously appreciative crowd who 
listened and mentally echoed, " Amen." 

Luck plays a very important part in 
getting through the ice-fields. The wind 
may take a sudden turn and so shift the 
ice as to leave an ample channel through 
which the ship, fog permitting, may safely 
pass on to its destination. But the St. 
Paul^ setting out June 17 on the north- 
ward stretch, did not meet with these 
favorable conditions. She was soon liter- 
ally "up against" the ice — not great 
towering bergs, but smaller ones fantas- 
tically shaped like floating islands, or 
swans, or whipped cream, for instance; 
146 



THE DANGERS OF BERING SEA 

very pretty to look at, but frequently 
only the frostings of large, slushy, and 
dangerous cakes that lurked beneath. 
Strange birds, somewhat smaller than 
penguins, sitting up stiffly and absurdly 
on their tails, marshaled themselves in 
military rows upon the ice, and occasion- 
ally a seal poked up its snaky and in- 
quiring head from beneath the still wa- 
ters. The sea was mirror-like. Some- 
times, intensified by the fog and mist 
which hung about, the sun shone down 
hot, as the vessel crept slowly through 
the haze and maze of her uncanny sur- 
roundings. It was a strange, weird scene, 
recalling the " Rime of the Ancient Mari- 
ner," about the albatross, the fog, the 
mist, and the red-hot sun. Several times 
we lay to for half a day. There was 
now no night. On one occasion, when 
147 



THE LAND OF NOME 

the ship slowly pushed into a cake of 
melting ice, the contact causing the red 
paint to gush to the surface, a bright 
Irishman in the steerage temporarily re- 
lieved the monotony by shouting out, 
" She bleeds at the nose." 

And it was becoming very monotonous. 
It was then June 22, and with fair con- 
ditions we should have been at Nome 
two days earlier. Passengers became 
uneasy or disgusted, and many expressed 
themselves to the effect that our excel- 
lent captain did n't Imow his business, — 
that we were lost, and would likely have to 
remain thus a month more, — and they were 
for " butting right through " the ice any- 
how. Some day there may be a great 
disaster in Bering Sea when an iron ship 
tries to force its way through the ice. 
There was a close call this season. Later 
148 



THE DANGERS OF BERING SEA 

in the day, however, icy and uninviting 
l^Tunivak Island appeared close at hand, 
some four hundred miles south of IS'ome, 
and we then knew where we were. Pass- 
ing at half speed along it, at what seemed 
a safe distance, suddenly there was a 
bump, followed almost immediately by a 
reversal of the engines, a churning of 
mud and eighteen feet of water, and fran- 
tic efforts to get off a treacherous mud- 
flat. This seemed the last straw, but the 
quick action of our engineer saved the 
day and a very dismal prospect. It was 
near this same island that the Lane^ our 
transport of last year, struck a reef on 
her way "down below" (]N'ome lingo 
for Washington, Oregon, or California) 
a month later. Her captain, unagining 
liimself well out at sea, was booming 
along in the fog at full speed and 
149 



THE LAND OF NOME 

with sails up, when the vessel struck 
with a mighty jar and became a total 
loss. The few passengers and the crew 
were all saved, as they needed only to 
step off upon the shore. 

The 8L Paul anchored that night in 
deeper water and a dense fog. During 
the night fog-horns were heard in the 
distance, and a series of exchanges fol- 
lowed in order that the approaching ves- 
sel might locate us. In the morning the 
Senator^ a sister ship, loomed up out of 
the fog, not a hundred yards distant. 
The captains held a shouting conversa- 
tion, and, instead of being a companion 
in misery, we learned that the Senator 
had already discharged passengers and 
freight at Nome, and was now on her 
way hack for another load! So, indeed, 
had the entire fleet, with a few exceptions. 
150 



A DISMAL OUTLOOK 

Now knowing the course, and the 
wind having shifted the ice, we pushed 
ahead through the fog; and in the clear 
light of the afternoon of June 24 the 
unforgetable scenery of Nome presented 
itself, whiter on the back-lying hills and 
less inviting than a year ago. Mining 
men eyed it seriously; for it looked as if 
the terrible winter were lingering in the 
lap of spring, which meant that the (at 
best) scant four months' working season 
might be materially curtailed. And this 
seemed the more probable when scores 
of dories came out and clustered about 
the ship, their idle owners offering for a 
consideration to carry passengers ashore. 
It was hard to realize that one was back 
again at this jumping-off place of the 
world, having meantime covered so great 
a distance and lived in scenes so totally 
151 



THE LAND OF NOME 

dissimilar. But it was not the same 
proposition to tackle as the preceding 
year — there never before was, and prob- 
ably never will be again, a thing like that; 
I had now only to follow a fixed program 
until some happening or condition should 
modify or wholly alter it. 

Orders were given for every one to get 
ashore right away that evening; and the 
lighters, towed by a small tug, were soon 
carr3dng the passengers thither, bag and 
baggage, and somewhat disgruntled. A 
few of us, who believed that, in the last 
analysis, those orders were a bluff to get 
rid of people, remained that night unmo- 
lested in our bunks, to visit the "golden 
sands " in ample time of morning. The 
waiters and stewards, too, were quitting 
the ship for good or evil ; for these shifty 
boys — many of them pleasant harum- 
162 



A DISMAL OUTLOOK 

scarum Englishmen, younger sons of 
good families — had no idea of being 
satisfied with thirty dollars a month the 
remainder of their days. I wish I could 
have taken down in shorthand the experi- 
ences of " Perry," — the way he told them, 
— who, encouraged, would sit in our 
state-room, when he could, and, to our 
great amusement, and most entertain- 
ingly, tell his history from the time when 
he played the races a few years ago, in 
"dear old England," to date. Before 
departing from San Francisco he had 
been dining with friends in high-life 
fashion at the Palace, the swell hotel of 
the city. There was n't a more efiicient 
steward on the ship, and he hustled for 
us in good style. How these "Atlantic 
Ocean boys " sneer at the less advanced 
conveniences of the Pacific ! 
153 



THE LAND OF NOME 

Well, then, in the morning, seated on 
a load of freight and baggage, the rest 
of the passengers, in a misty rain, trav- 
ersed the intervening two miles of then 
smooth water, and deposited themselves 
and their hand-baggage upon the famous, 
and infamous, shores of Nome. The 
" golden sands " at that time were partly 
covered by dead dogs and refuse, but 
everything else seemed systematic and 
orderly; there were, happily, no longer 
evidences of great waste and confusion 
such as prevailed the year before. That 
the lessons of last September's storms, 
however, had been unheeded was evi- 
denced by the shacks and frame build- 
ings rebuilt down upon the beach itself, 
and there awaiting a like fate from 
another ugly assault of the Bering Sea. 
One of the signs of the times which stood 
154 



A DISMAL OUTLOOK 

forth familiarly, and recalled scenes of 
the past, was that of the "Gold Belt 
Dance Hall." 

While A guarded the baggage, 

W and I went in search of a tempo- 
rary abiding-place, and decided in favor 
of an unfurnished room at the Gold Hill 
Hotel, situated in a less crowded part of 
the town. Into this we soon placed 
our folding cots, blankets, and personal 
effects; and as the bar immediately un- 
derneath us was not then doing a land- 
office business, we considered ourselves 
lucky to be so well settled thus soon. 
The sea, fortunately, was sufficiently calm 
to permit discharging the freight, which 
was well cared for and put under cover 
by the reliable Alaska Commercial Com- 
pany, to which we had intrusted it and 
ourselves. 

155 



THE LAND OF NOME 

The next object of concern, after hav- 
ing delivered certain papers and seen 
several of the legal lights, was to de- 
termine whether one conld then proceed 
on the way to Council City, and, if so, 
how; but the inevitable conclusion was 
soon forced upon me that I should have 
to remain as cheerfully as possible in 
Nome until Golovin Bay should be clear 
of ice. Several attempts had already 
been made to effect an entrance there, but 
without success. Assuredly it was a late 
season. It was still impossible for ves- 
sels to reach St. Michaels or Teller, the 
latter being the starting-point for the 
new Bluestone and Kougarok districts; 
and the Nome dailies were issuing sen- 
sational extras with large head-lines tell- 
ing that " Fifteen Hundred People " were 
"Starving at the Mouth of the Yukon" — 
156 



A DISMAL OUTLOOK 

at St. Michaels, one hundred and fifty 
miles away. Many of the neighboring 
creeks were yet filled with ice and snow, 
so as to allow only preliminary operations 
for mining, or none at all. The prospect 
was made more dismal by the stormy and 
cold rainy weather which then prevailed. 
The gale wrecked several small craft and 
caused the remaining steamers to put 
out to sea, and the thermometer ranged 
at about 40°. Fortunate indeed it was 
that these conditions did not exist the 
year before, when so many thousands of 
helpless, unprepared people were depos- 
ited upon those alluring shores. N^ow, 
however, the numerous prophets of evil 
preached the doctrine that last summer 
had been an exception, and that this sort of 
thing would continue throughout the open 
months, which, fortunately, it did not do. 
157 



THE LAND OF NOME 

At the new and well-appointed post- 
office I was much impressed and pleased 
to find a type-written letter from my 
partner, dated at Council City the mid- 
dle of June, which told of his good 
health and settlement in our new quar- 
ters. This letter had been brought over- 
land before the melting snow and ice 
made it unsafe or impossible to cross the 
intervening streams. Previous to this, 
my last letter from him, received at San 
Francisco just before sailing, bore date 
of February 13. 

Nome seemed very orderly, much im- 
proved, and more substantial in general 
appearance. It had been duly incorpo- 
rated as a city. About a mile of the prin- 
cipal streets had been boarded over (a 
great improvement), though at that time, 
in front of our hotel, the horses sank 
158 



A DISMAL OUTLOOK 

belly-deep in muck and mud as of yore. 
The banner sign, "City Morgue," had 
now assumed more modest proportions; 
people who had wintered at Nome looked 
strong and well; and the doctors some- 
what plaintively said that the camp had 
been "disgustingly healthy." The ma- 
jority of the deaths were those of too 
venturesome, or poorly equipped, travelers 
or prospectors who had perished from 
cold. But the average individual who 
had spent the winter there had lived very 
comfortably, with plenty of good things 
to eat and drink, and I was informed 
that the place had been very gay " so- 
cially." Some were in fine feather, 
others hopeful, and but few discour- 
aged. 

One of the characters then at Nome, 
known and unmistakable from the Klon- 
L59 



THE LAND OF NOME 

dike down, was " Mother " Woods, in her 
sunbonnet, abbreviated skirts, and "muk- 
hiks " or native sealskin boots. A woman 
of middle age, she had participated in 
almost every gold stampede, enduring as 
much as a man; and she swore like a 
trooper. But in the winter she had 
nursed and cared for the sick and frozen 
with the greatest tenderness, it was said; 
in recognition of which a voluntary con- 
tribution had been made to enable her to 
appeal a case which in the court below 
had gone contrary to her mining inter- 
ests. I had, of course, heard of " Scotch 
verdicts " ; but during the winter months 
the Nome public had coined an expression 
new to me in referring to the " Scotch 
whisky decisions"; and, without regard 
to the possible ancestry of the learned 
court, it was a lamentable fact that its 
160 



A DISMAL OUTLOOK 

Scotch had been potent in making a rye 
business of justice. 

W was heading for Solomon River, 

— about thirty miles distant on the coast 
east of Nome, — and, believing that he had 
a good opportunity to reach it with some 
friends on the Rutli^ a steam- schooner, he 
gladly pulled out from Nome on the 27th 
of June, while we wished him the wealth 
of " King Solomon's mines." 

The days passed by; the inhospitable 
weather continued ; and still there was no 
certainty of getting into Golovin Bay to 
travel up the streams to Council City. 
It was becoming a rather serious matter, 
and it would have been natural for my 
partner to suppose that I either had been 
prevented from coming altogether or had 
been indefinitely delayed by some mishap. 
I had seen all the people I cared to see, 
161 



THE LAND OF NOME 

was heartily sick of the town, and the 
Gold Hill Hotel, thinly partitioned and 
put up on the cardboard plan, was not 
running a very effective heating-plant. 
One day there shuffled uninvited into 
the room, a trifle in his cups, a miserable- 
looking individual who announced that 
he was "Uncle Billy" and that every- 
body knew him, and then proceeded to 
jabber his tale of woe. He didn't ex- 
plain how or why it had happened, but 
merely whimpered that he had been " shot 
to pieces" during the winter. By way 
of illustration, and to prove this statement, 
after pointing to one useless arm he went 
doTV^l into his pocket, and pulling out a 
"poke" (miner's pocket-book), emptied 
from it a large-sized bullet and a consid- 
erable piece of bone, adding, with at- 
tempted humor, that it was n't everybody 
162 



A DISMAL OUTLOOK 

who carried his bones about with him in 
that way. It seemed that he was being 
made to do menial work in the kitchen, 
whereas he was really a millionaire, to 
substantiate which this delightful person 
again resorted to his wardrobe and drew 
forth a number of crmnpled and dirty 
mining papers. Appearing on the scene 
soon after I had finished reading in " The 
Crisis " of " Uncle Billy " (General Sher- 
man), this pitiful result of one battle 
made an impression by contrast. 

The popular saloons and gambling- 
houses were crowded, but the stakes were 
low (for mining operations had not yet 
begun, and "dust^' was not coming into 
camp), and probably half of the atten- 
dance was due to the warmth of these 
places. All the games were going — 
roulette, vingt-et-un, faro, poker, stud- 
ies 



THE LAND OF NOME 

poker, Klondike, and craps. There was 
usually a platform in the rear supporting 
a piano and a phonograph, and serving 
as a stage from which sirens would tor- 
ture the popular ballads, whose agony 
penetrated the street. 

I should have enjoyed attending the 
sessions of the court, but the judge and 
court staff were then on the high seas, 
going to hold a short term at St. Michaels, 
pursuant to law. In a more or less des- 
perate attempt to fill in the tedious wait- 
ing-time, A and I one evening sought 

amusement at the " Standard Theater." 
The entertainment was not calculated to 
delight delicate sensibilities. 

The glorious Fourth was appropri- 
ately celebrated by ample decoration with 
the flag throughout the town and a very 
creditable parade, which, headed by a 
164 



A DISMAL OUTLOOK 

company of sturdy regulars from the 
neighboring military post, was followed 
by an A 1 fire-engine drawn by fine horses, 
three uniformed hose companies, and a 
score of lively little school-children. 
Such are the enterprise and conquering 
spirit of our people ! 



165 




VII 

UP THE STREAMS-AN EVENING AT 
JOHNSON'S CAMP 

>Y this time it was certain that 
Golovin Bay was open. The 
Klondikers and Yukoners, a 
sturdy lot of earnest men and 
not looking a bit starved, were pouring 
into town from St. Michaels, and the 
report came that ships at the northwest 
were unloading at Teller and Grantley 
Harbor. Nothing loath, I got away from 
!Nome in the evening of July 5 on the 
small steamer 'Elmore^ Avhich I did not 
remember with especial relish. The floor 
accommodations had meantime been sup- 
166 



UP THE STREAMS 

planted by bunks, and the trip to Golovin 
Bay, which we reached the following 
afternoon, was not half bad. Just before 
anchoring, we came alongside of the Ruth, 
which lay there absolutely helpless, her 
steering-gear smashed beyond redemp- 
tion. Much surprised to see W on 

the derelict, I reached over and shook his 
hand, and then heard his little tale of woe. 
When he had left Nome, nine days be- 
fore, it was too rough to land freight 
at Solomon Eiver, and, having a number 
of passengers and considerable freight 
aboard for Golovin Bay, the Ruth had 
proceeded thither, only to run into the 
ice, smash her rudder, and be almost cap- 
sized by the powerful outgoing floes while 
held tight in the ice. Nearly the entire 
crew had promptly deserted, and only the 
captain, a sulky engineer, and a few en- 
167 



THE LAND OF NOME 

forcedly faithful passengers remained. 
(One of the numerous little hard-luck 
stories of life in the Arctic " gold- 
fields.") 

It was fortunate to find at Chenik the 
North Star^ a small stern-wheeler river 
boat, with whose captain a number of us 
quickly made satisfactory arrangements 
for immediate transportation to White 
Mountain, the half-way point to Council 
City. She soon, duck-like, flopped over to 
the side of the Elmore; our freight was 
rustled into her with all despatch; and, 
at eight o'clock in the evening, pretty 
well laden with passengers and their ef- 
fects, this gem of the ocean, under the 
peculiar care of a crazy old Swede and 
his motley crew of three, was pufling and 
breathing hard and pushing her clumsy 
way across the bay toward the hidden 
168 



UP THE STREAMS 

delta of the Fish River. It was a mat- 
ter of lying about the primitive machinery, 
by the boilers and wood fuel, to keep 
warm, and listening to a not too delight- 
ful crowd of alleged miners swapping lies 
about the country. Sleep, of course, was 
out of the question; a place to stretch 
out was not available except in the adja- 
cent bunks of the crew, and on inspection 
of these I decided that I would rather not. 
It would not have seemed at all natural, 
or homelike, had we not proceeded, about 
midnight, to run into fog and upon the 
mud-flats. Only two and a half feet of 
water were requisite to allow the vessel 
to navigate, but in order to get that depth 
it was necessary to keep strictly in a zig- 
zag " channel," regarding whose location 
our navigator was not precisely expert. 
"While we lingered upon the mucky bot- 
169 



THE JjA^T> of NOME 

torn, a section of the crew, provided with 
a pole and a boat, under the orders of the 
captain (expressed forcibly and pictur- 
esquely, — not to say profanely, — a la 
Suede) , would complete circles ahead and 
about the JSTortli Star^ shouting back, " One 
foot," " Two," " Two and a half," " Three," 
according as they sounded the depths. 
But we did finally, somehow, get into 
the Fish River; and, after needlessly 
butting the banks several times and 
smashing the tender, our little steamboat 
the following afternoon rested on the 
shore at White Mountain, and another 
transfer of freight promptly ensued. 
How unpleasantly familiar one's boxes 
and bags become by the time they have 
reached their final destination! White 
Mountain showed plainly enough, in its 
wholly demolished structures and twisted 
170 



UP THE STREAMS 

log cabins, the sweeping force of the ice- 
jam and flood which had rushed down 
upon it, about the middle of June, on 
the breaking up of the streams. Almost 
providentially, it seemed, a saloon re- 
mained serenely intact in the very center 
of the havoc. 

So far so good, but the only way to 
travel in this country is, if possible, to 
shove right through somehow, and recu- 
perate when the ultimate goal has been 
gained. Together with two others who 
were making the trip to Council, I made 
terms with " Ed " Trundy, a freighter, to 
carry my ton and a half of stuff the re- 
maining twenty-five or thirty miles for 
three cents a pound. His equipment for 
transportation consisted of a long, shallow, 
forty-five-foot boat, two river poles, an as- 
sistant, " Louis," five dogs, and a swearing 
171 



THE LAND OF NOME 

vocabulary which was universally recog- 
nized as being the most replete, ornate, 
and frequently employed in that section 
of the country — which is saying a great 
deal and paying a very high compliment 
to Mr. Trundy. But, then, that robust 
gentleman had enjoyed and profited by 
many advantages of training and envi- 
ronment not shared by his less fortunate 
competitors. Born in the backwoods of 
Maine, he had been a lumberman, had 
shipped before the mast as seaman, 
driven a hack in Boston and a street-car 
in New York, had freighted on the Yukon, 
and it is possible that he may have driven 
a mule-team in Texas. " Ed " steered the 
craft, and, when the going was good, 
those dogs, under the special charge of 
Louis, pulled the entire load of three 
tons up the swollen streams just about as 
172 



UP THE STREAMS 

fast as the rest of us cared to walk. We 
rode when the dogs rode, that is, when 
it was necessary to pole over a slough or 
cross the stream. The recent freshets 
and still melting snow in the hills and 
mountains beyond made shallow rivers of 
the streams, — in places, however, deep, — 
and thus, to a large extent, obviated the 
heartbreaking and back-breaking expe- 
riences of the preceding year. 

The plan of travel was to proceed only 
a few miles that evening to a temporary 
encampment where Trundy had arranged 
to pick up some additional freight, and 
where we should spend the night, making 
an early start in the morning. Arrived 
there, I imposed upon the good nature 
of some agreeable fellows, lugging my 
blankets into their tent and spending the 
night with them, packed like sardines. 
173 



THE LAND OF NOME 

We made an early start in the forbidding 
morning, our number being increased to 
nine, and not a very choice company 
either. It was soon apparent that the 
expedition included two parties who 
claimed the same mining property, toward 
which they were heading with all de- 
spatch, and that there was bad blood 
between them. Suspicious looks and 
whispered conversations were corrobo- 
rative evidence. 

At two o'clock we arrived at Craft's 
Road-House, near the mouth of the 
Neukluk River, where a halt was made 
for dinner. This was a good-sized log 
cabin, with scrupulously neat interior, 
kept by Mr. and Mrs. Craft, but the 
Mrs. was the presiding genius. Photo- 
graphs of their restaurants at Chicago 
and Dawson, and of family and friends, 
174 



UP THE STREAMS 

stiffly yet fondly grouped, adorned the 
walls. And what a good dinner they 
gave us — a perfect gorge for one dol- 
lar, and cheap at ^ye times the price! 
Louis was taken ill here with cramps 
in his arms and legs, due to overwork 
and wetting, but only after much persua- 
sion consented to take off his boots and 
lie down on the reindeer- skins by the 
stove. While he was recuperating, the 
good-natured and loquacious hostess, 
seated behind (and with elbows upon) the 
bar, entertained us ; for Mrs. Craft, as the 
name implies, knows her business and 
enjoys the reputation of being a "fine 
talker." Her entertainment for this oc- 
casion was a somewhat broad and gen- 
eral discussion of the marital obligations 
which should exist between " squaw- 
men" and their Eskimo (truly enough) 
175 



THE LAND OF NOME 

better halves, citing her observations of 
the Eskimo code of ethics and certain 
instances where the informality of exist- 
ing relations had been made conventional 
by voluntary appearance before a United 
States commissioner and a performance 
of the proper ceremonies by that officer. 
Louis gamely enough responded, and 
soon the expedition, in rain-and-wet- 
proof armor of slickers and hip rubber 
boots, set out to gain that night John- 
son's Camp, a couple of vacant cabins on 
the Neukluk, free to all transients. High 
up on the banks, extending frequently 
back upon the flats, the willows and brush, 
and sometimes the small spruce timber, 
lay bent and crushed to the surface, 
shredded and skinned, almost machine- 
like, by the ice- jam which, not long be- 
fore, had roared and swept down the 
176 



AN EVENING AT JOHNSON'S CAMP 

streams to the bay. Old landmarks in a 
new country continually presented them- 
selves, recalling vividly the experiences 
of the summer before and the companions 
who had shared them in the " mush " up 
the rivers to Council — "rivers" then by 
courtesy only. 

The origin and derivation of the word 
"mush" have been given heretofore, but 
will bear further reference. It is perhaps 
the most frequently used word in north- 
western Alaska, being universally em- 
ployed for "walk," "tramp," "travel," 
etc. ; and in view of the generally prevailing 
conditions of snow, rain, muck, mud, and 
moss, the student of philology may find in 
this expressive word a rare and precious 
instance of onomatopoeia. This little 
digression in the narrative has not been 
made chiefly for the purpose of exhibiting 
177 



THE LAT^D OF N^OME 

familiarity with Greek, but rather as an 
introduction for modestly recording a 
compliment which is treasured by the nar- 
rator. Perhaps it was n't known that I 
had been through that sort of thing before, 
only more so, and perhaps, being built on a 
fairly long and economical plan, I had a 
peculiar advantage in that kind of travel, 
but, at any rate, I felt that I had received 
a very high compliment, delicately ex- 
pressed, when an old-timer in the party, 
with unnecessary calls on the Almighty, 
told me that I was a " musher from hell." 
At nine o'clock at night we climbed 
the steep, slippery, slimy bank to the 
two cabins which constituted Johnson's 
Camp, to find the one apparently inhab- 
itable cabin already occupied by four as 
tough-looking specimens of humanity as 
ever came down the Yukon. But that 
178 



AN EVENING AT JOHNSON'S CAMP 

didn't make any difference, except that 
they had a first lien on the soft spots of 
the floor to the extent of four times six 
feet by two. They had a cheerful, warm 
fire cracking in the stove, the floor was 
dry, and the outlook for a good rest was 
excellent. But it was not thus to be. 
Thirteen in the cabin taxed its capacity. 
Another party who sought the same shel- 
ter, blocked at the entrance by a full 
house and a stony stare, departed. The 
cooking began to mess things, and the 
carelessness and profuseness of the gen- 
tlemen's expectoration, — gently but dia- 
bolically aggravated by the now general 
leakage through a sieve-like roof, — elim- 
inated from my mind any intention which 
I may have had of placing my blankets 
and myself upon the floor. In fact, it 
was difficult to locate one's self, sitting 
179 



THE LAND OF NOME 

or standing, so as to avoid a trickle of 
water down the neck. Here was a good 
time for a bottle of whisky to get in its 
work, and Louis needed a stiff drink, 
for he was pretty ill. So, round it went 
throughout the choice circle, and back it 
came to me, empty enough. 

Three of us decided to sit out the night 
about the fire ; the rest in grotesque fashion 
lay stretched upon the floor. As a David 
Harum sort of miner once said to me, 
" The more you see of a certain class of 
people, the better you love a dog " ; and 
about that time I felt very kindly disposed 
toward the unjustly-rated lower annuals. 
It was generally agreed, before the turn- 
ing in began, to make a four-o'clock start 
in the morning, and about the only thing 
which the three of us who sat together had 
in common was the intention that such a 
180 



AN EVENING AT JOHNSON'S CAMP 

start should be made. As we poked and 
added to the fire, and dodged the drip, 
the would-be sleepers showed theu^ dis- 
approval of the noise and heat by moving 
and muttering, and the semiconscious, 
but unrivaled, Trundy rounded out a 
series of epithets which left no doubt 
as to his exact sentiments. One of the 
figures raised itself and basted the head 
of a snoring Yukoner. Louis, in his 
dreamy wanderings, with unnecessary 
vigor, but through force of habit, at- 
tacked the poor dogs by references to 
their maternal ancestry. One of the two 
who kept me company, whom I despised 
more than the other, of wizened phy- 
sique and a mean eye, fearful lest his 
goods might spoil, occasionally migrated 
out into the early morning light and 
wet; and, slipping and sliding down the 
181 



THE LAND OF NOME 

mucky incline, mushed over to the 
boat, lifted the canvas, and investigated 
the quantity of water in the craft. Then, 
perhaps having bailed a little, he would 
climb back again to enjoy the hospitality 
of the cabin and to intimate that he was 
doing my work as well as his own. Hav- 
ing seen his supplies go into the boat 
first, and on the bottom, I could remark 
that I would take the chances of having my 
goods damaged. The best we could do 
was to rouse the reluctant crowd at five 
o'clock, and, after a delectable breakfast, 
served as you snatched it, get under way 
shortly after six to complete the remain- 
ing six or seven miles to Council City. 
It had not been a pleasant evening. Per- 
haps the night spent on the Elmore^ the 
year before, was, on the whole, a more 
disagreeable experience; but, neverthe- 
182 



AN EVENING AT JOHNSON'S CAMP 

less, the writer believes it would require 
a combination of the genius of Poe and 
Kipling to paint a fitting word-picture of 
that sojourn at Johnson's Camp, on the 
NeuHuk. 

The stream was now very high from 
the rain which had just ceased. The 
freighters had their hardest work ahead 
of them ; for the sloughs became more fre- 
quent, the water extended well up to the 
brush and spruce, and until we reached a 
point a few miles below Council there was 
but little footing for the dogs. The rest 
of us, leaving the meanderings of the river, 
struck out overland as straight as possi- 
ble for Council. I caught some of them 
eying me like a hawk, and knew that 
they suspected that I had a retainer from 
the gentlemen with whom I had so agree- 
ably passed the night. Having made a 
183 



THE LAND OF NOME 

wide detour inland through mossy swamp 
and brush, we came to Mystery Creek, 
which was adorned in places with deep 
banks of solid snow and glaciers. This 
crossed, and having gained the open, 
that weird, familiar landscape presented 
itself — the bleak hills back of Council, 
rising to the dignity of mountains, fringed 
at the base with a growth of small tim- 
ber, and approached by a plain of tundra. 
As Sam Dunham, in one of his matchless 
Alaskan poems, with fine alliteration 
says: 

"We traversed the toe-twisting tundra, 
Where reindeer root round for their feed " ; 

and if there is any contrivance of mother 
earth's which is calculated to sap man's 
remaining energy, it is this plodding over 
the Russian moss, avoiding the stagnant 
184 



AN EVENING AT JOHNSON'S CAMP 

pools upon its surface, and stepping and 
reaching from hassock to hassock, 

Sometimes as soggy as sawdust, 
More frequently soft as a sponge. 

[Mr. Dunham will, I trust, pardon this 
imitation of his " alliteration's artful aid."] 
Inspired, perhaps, by the nearness of 
the goal, and possibly by a desire to show 
them I could do it, I then proceeded to 
cut loose from the "hardy miners"; and, 
not long afterward, in the cool and 
sunny forenoon, stood high on the brow 
of the precipitous palisades leading into 
Council, which looked very attractive in 
what it promised and in its own strangely 
picturesque surroundings. Then fol- 
lowed a hurried descent to Mel sing 
Creek, a fording of that little tributary, 
and, now in town, a search for the edifice 
185 



THE LAKD OF NOME 

which should bear the firm insignia. 
There it was, my name staring me in 
the face! Hastily mounting the three 
steps, if you please, which led to the front 
entrance of the new log cabin, I pounded 
the door, heard a familiar " Come in," and 
burst in upon my partner, looking as fine 
as a fiddle and in the very act of laying 
down the law to an unsuspecting client. 
Thus then, at last, after not a few vicissi- 
tudes, some seven thousand miles had 
been traversed and the au revoir of the 
year before realized in the present. It 
had been, of course, an easier undertaking 
than before, and at no time lacking in 
interest; but the writer believes that, as 
regards the trip from Golovin Bay to 
Council City, the physical labor of the 
previous year was preferable to the lack 
of companionship in its successor. 
186 




VIII 

THE COUNCIL CITY MINING DISTRICT 
-JOE KIPLEY AND OTHEES 

jUR quarters consisted of an 
excellent twenty-by-sixteen 
cabin, made of whip-sawed 
spruce timber, the round log 
side of course being outside. Half of it, 
partitioned off, was devoted to our office 
— a very complete one, I may say, for 
Alaska. The other half, its wainscoting 
adorned with pans, pots, saws, hannners, 
and the like, and its shelves and box-cup- 
boards holding various cooking and eat- 
ing paraphernalia, answered the purposes 
of kitchen and dining-room combined. A 
187 



THE LAND OF NOME 

platform four feet wide, and stretching 
across in the middle from wall to wall, 
formed the base of an isosceles triangle 
with the peak of the roof, and thereby 
made a loft or cache, convenient for 
storing provisions, etc. But, for the life 
of me, I could discover no provisions for 
storing ourselves at night. Immediately 
in the rear of the cabin was a tent, but 
that was filled with miscellaneous stuff, 
and evidently was not intended for sleep- 
ing purposes. At last the mystery was 
solved in looking behind an apparently 
unnecessary hanging of drill tapestry 
which covered my side of the partition, 
and discovering, neatly folded and caught 
up against the concealed wall, an excel- 
lent home-made bed or bunk, whose only 
springs, howe^^er, were the hinges from 
which it swung. Three fine, friendly 
188 



THE COUNCIL CITY MINING DISTEICT 

dogs, now enjoying theii^ summer vaca- 
tion, loafed about the back door, near a 
sled upon which rested three old gold- 
pans from which they fed. The cabin 
was but a little distance back of our old 
camping-place, the marks of which were 
still very evident, and it connnanded a 
fine view of the tortuous river and the 
landscape beyond. The appearance of 
the camp had improved, — many new 
cabins and several more stores had sprung 
up, — but I could obtain no concrete ex- 
planation from my partner, its president 
or mayor, why, during my absence, the 
city's main thoroughfare had not been 
asphalted. My letters from the " out- 
side " telling of the time of my departure, 
and those intrusted at ]N"ome to pre- 
tended overland travelers, all came some 
time after my arrival, but I was, never- 
189 



THE LAND OF NOME 

theless, expected to appear upon the 
scene any day in early July. 

In very short order I was again in the 
traces of Alaskan harness and developing 
with my partner a certain team-work in 
our household duties as well as in legal 
and mining matters. We were truly 
" hewers of wood and drawers of water," 
and we enjoyed excellent health, although 
we did our own cooking. Perhaps our 
best parlor trick was what we were 
pleased to term "the poetry of motion." 
This took place after the mahogany had 
been cleared for action, when one of us, 
presiding over a pan of hot water, fished 
out from under the soapy suds some 
utensil and passed it along to the other, 
who, accepting gracefully, gave it a 
polish in transit and flourished it onward 
to its allotted place. Toward the end of 
190 



THE CX)UNCIL CITY MIKING DISTRICT 

the season a neighborly little woman, the 
New England wife of a miner from 
Maine, brought us some pastry which de- 
lightfully suggested the land of the Puri- 
tans. She sympathetically remarked that 
she would have performed many similar 
acts had she known we were doing our 
own cooking. I must admit that we 
hmght our bread. Before I left Council 
we were guests at a dinner-party given 
by this hospitable neighbor, and rarely 
have I enjoyed a meal more. The home 
was most comfortable and roomy, and 
we ate from pretty china which this little 
housewife had brought all the way from 
New England. This goes to show that 
people can now live comfortably and well 
in that remote country, if they only will. 
The winter of course had been very 
long and tedious, and, in many ways, a 
191 



THE LAND OF NOME 

most trying one; but it was surprising 
to learn how lightly clad one can safely 
and comfortably move about with the 
thermometer ranging from 30° to 60^ 
below zero. This is due to the dryness 
of the cold. For instance, at 30° below, 
and with no outer garments other than 
flannel shirt and overalls, one would per- 
spu-e freely in chopping wood. With 
hands and feet warmly protected, and 
winter underwear and wind-proof outer 
clothes (drill coat and ordinary overalls), 
and exercise^ one can comfortably weather 
a degree of cold which, in lower latitudes, 
would immediately transform him to an 
icicle. The snow had averaged on the 
level places about five feet in depth, but 
was very deep where it had drifted and 
been banked by the wind, making it a 
common thing to have to dig one's self 
192 



THE COUNCIL CITY MINING DISTRICT 

out, or for a party to lend assistance in 
bringing to the light, if any there was, 
snow-buried men and women. The 
shortest day had given three and a half 
hours of dusky light; the coldest had 
forced the thermometer down to 60^ 
below zero, where kerosene had frozen. 
Horses had to be killed on account of 
the absence of fodder; and, after having 
been left out a short time to freeze, one 
would chop them up with an ax for dog- 
food, the chips flying as if they were tim- 
ber. Frequent salutations on the trail 
were such as, " Say, old man, your nose is 
frozen," which might bring forth the re- 
joinder, " So is yours " ; whereupon both 
would rub snow upon the senseless point, 
and proceed onward. It was the con- 
tinual wind, sometimes impossible to with- 
stand, which worked the greatest hard- 
193 



THE LAND OF NOME 

ship and fiendishly got upon the nerves. 
Old Tom "Welch, whom I well re- 
membered, and his partner, while trying 
to prospect in the snow, had been frozen 
to death; and there had been some talk 
of lynching the individual who had un- 
dertaken to supply them with provisions, 
upon whose failure to do so the two un- 
fortunates had essayed to return to Coun- 
cil in a storm which had cost them their 
lives. Some others had met a like un- 
necessary fate. The natives and oldest 
white inhabitants unanimously agreed 
that it had been the most severe winter 
known; and it was an attested fact that 
many creeks in that region remained 
throughout the following summer hope- 
less ice and presented to the expectant 
miner a frozen face. 

The freighters came in at midnight the 



THE COUIS-CIL CITY MIN^IIS^G DISTRICT 

day of my arrival ; and by the noon fol- 
lowing my twenty-odd pieces of freight 
and baggage, intact, were properly stored 
and distributed in and about our abode — 
a very great satisfaction indeed. Those 
fellows earned theii* three cents a pound 
all right. A little later in the season two 
very small and very light-draft stern- 
wheelers, referred to as " coal-oil 
Johnnies," plied intermittently between 
White Mountain and Council, as the con- 
dition of the streams allowed; but the 
usual and best-adapted means of trans- 
portation were long, shallow scows which 
a horse pulled up-stream freighted, and 
rode down upon empty. 

This section of the country was now 

the Council City Precinct and Recording 

District, a subdivision of the Second 

Judicial Division, as designated by the 

195 



THE LAND OF NOME 

Alaskan code. A United States com- 
missioner, with liberal jurisdiction and a 
marshal at his back, supplanted our mili- 
tary tribunal and the mining recorder of 
the last year. With the exceptions that 
his jurisdiction in civil matters is limited 
to a certain amount, that he can neither 
grant an injunction nor try title to real 
estate, his powers, judicial and otherwise, 
are plenary and varied. For instance, in 
addition to his civil and extensive crimi- 
nal jurisdiction, the commissioner is ex 
officio probate judge, coroner, notary 
public, mining recorder, and tier of matri- 
monial knots. In the latter capacity he 
is not overburdened with work, and hav- 
ing once tied, he has no authority to un- 
loose. There is a section of the crimi- 
nal code which in mining matters worked 
very salutary results. Under it an action 
196 



THE COUNCIL CITY MINING DISTRICT 

of "criminal trespass" can be brought 
in the commissioner's court, in which 
the court may consider the record title, 
and, in proper cases, oust irresponsible 
" jumpers " or legal blackmailers, who 
may then, if they wish, in a legal way, 
seek a remedy in the District Court at 
^ome. We proceeded on several occa- 
sions under this section. If the defen- 
dant was found guilty, he was ejected from 
the premises by the marshal, and either 
paid his fine and costs or languished 
awhile in an unupholstered "jug." Al- 
though, naturally enough, he was in the 
country to better himself from the ground, 
and not primarily from his fees, our genial 
commissioner presided over his court with 
dignity, fairness, and ability. I always 
made it a point to wear a necktie in 
appearing before his Honor. After a 
197 



THE LAND OF NOME 

trial he might drop into our cabin; and, 
over a cigar and a little Scotch whisky, 
we would suggest wherein, in our opinion, 
he had erred in his rulings or decisions, to 
which presumptuous insinuations he would 
either good-naturedly assent or demur. 

There was a lot doing. The District 
Court, though not appointing receivers, 
was grinding out injunctions, or tempo- 
rary restraining orders, which, frequently 
conveyed by some legal luminary, came 
drifting over from ISTome, and, in conse- 
quence, some poor devil or arrant rascal 
was thrown out of his job and summoned 
to appear at the metropolis. There was 
a pause, however, about the middle of 
August, when Judge ^oyes pulled up 
stakes and sailed for the "outside" to 
prepare himself for his October ordeal 
before the Court of Appeals. 
198 



THE COUNCIL CITY MINING DISTKICT 

Not long after my arrival, a good fel- 
low named Joe Brennan, while bringing 
his horses and freight up the rivers, was 
drowned some ten miles below Council. 
It was believed that he was swimming a 
horse, and that when the animal climbed 
the bank, Brennan fell off and, his boots 
filling, drowned. When the body was 
recovered, a few days later, it was brought 
to Council, a coroner's inquest held, 
and then decently buried. Northwestern 
Alaska furnishes excellent graveyards, 
rivaling the art of ancient Egypt. Its 
ground will preserve a man forever, but 
it is a long way for his friends and rela- 
tives to come to see him. A small 
amount of currency was found on Bren- 
nan; a poke of dust with which he 
was to execute certain commissions was 
identified and returned to its owner; but 
199 



THE LAND OF NOME 

a considerable sum of money of his own, 
with which he was known to have left 
Nome, was missing. Doubtless the body 
had been robbed. But there are lots of 
good men in Alaska, although in the 
Nome country they seem to be pretty well 
scattered. Brennan's two partners, who 
came to consult us about the estate of 
the deceased, were such men — manly fel- 
lows who wanted to have "poor Joe's" 
property rights preserved. One of them 
came from Washington, my native city, 
with whom I could chat about familiar 
landmarks; the other, who looked the 
athlete, had held the New England 
championship for the high jump, and had 
trained for that event several college men 
of my acquaintance. It is a well-worn 
phrase, but the world is very small. The 
Washingtonian was duly appointed special 
200 



JOE KIPLEY AND OTHEKS 

administrator, and soon realized funds on 
a sale of the horses, feed, provisions, etc., 
which were well within the legal defini- 
tion of " perishable property." 

Enjoying the proud distinction of be- 
ing notaries public for Alaska, and being 
therefore quasi-judicial officers, we were 
frequently called upon to take acknow- 
ledgments, affidavits, and depositions. I 
am not likely to forget the work of tak- 
ing an affidavit from one Joe Ripley. 
It was of immediate importance in liti- 
gation at Nome, and Ripley, a squaw- 
man, who lived with his Eskimo wife 
and children a number of miles down the 
stream, had been specially engaged to 
come up and make affidavit to certain 
matters with which he alone was familiar. 
As luck would have it, my partner, who 
was acquainted with Eipley, had been 
201 



THE LAND OF NOME 

called away to euphonious Puekmummy 
Creek (Eskimo, "quick"), and it de- 
volved upon me to take the affidavit. 
Ripley and whisky, I was informed, 
were always associated together, — were 
almost synonymous terms, — and when- 
ever "Joe" struck town it was a gala 
day for the saloons. In abnormal con- 
dition, Mr. Ripley was a mild-mannered, 
polite, well-educated son of old England. 
But my hopes that he might appear in the 
latter condition were blasted when, in re- 
sponse to a shuffling and a bang at the 
door, I welcomed in a small man with 
white mustache, wearing the native coat 
or " parkie," and gloriously, triumphantly 
full! There was no doubt that this was 
Ripley — recipient of the Victoria cross 
for gallantry in India, sailor, miner, 
squaw-man, and devotee of the bottle. 
202 



JOE RIPLEY AND OTHERS 

" Where 's Castle?" was his opening re- 
mark, of course not knowing me from 
Adam; and, as I explained my presence, 
I racked my brain for delicate, unoffend- 
ing language which should suggest that 
he sleep " it " off and call again on the 
morrow. The suggestion of delay brought 
forth a flow of noble sentiments, delivered 
in heroic attitude, accompanied by ges- 
tures dramatic. Pointing down the river, 
he burst forth in glowing language on 
the subject of the devoted spouse whom 
he longed to see, somewhat inconsistently 
declaiming, however, that the lady was 
twice as big as he and usually shook the 
life out of him whenever he tacked home 
with several sheets in the wind. I ea- 
gerly seized upon this latter tribute to his 
charmer's charms as an argument for his 
remaining over, but realized that it was 
203 



THE LAND OF NOME 

useless to argue when, with emphatic 
" No, no" 's, and a beating of his breast, 
he exclaimed : " Old Joe has a very small 
heart for white people, but " (stretching 
forth his arms in yearning affection to- 
ward the beloved) "his heart goes out 
to her like a bullock's." This was all very 
romantic and entertaining, but that affi- 
davit had to be obtained, and Captain 
John Smith, somehow, had to be pre- 
vented from escaping to his Pocahontas. 
Excusing myself with the explanation 
that I would consult my client in the 
matter, I went on a still hunt for the man 
who might manage Ripley, and the lat- 
ter, navigating his way toward the near- 
est saloon, went on a hunt for the still. 
I found my man, explained the situation, 
and instructed him, if impossible to de- 
tain Ripley, to steer him back to the 
204 



JOE RIPLEY AKB OTHEBS 

office, where we should proceed with the 
ceremonies. Captain John having pre- 
viously, when sober, told our client the 
facts to which he could swear, I pur- 
posed having these facts act as a check 
to a too willing or imaginative affiant. 
Shortly afterward, I heard the two men 
coming, cleared the deck for action, and 
braced myself for a delectable situation. 
It was a story of a " snow " location of 
mining property. The law requires that 
a certain fixed amount of work or expen- 
diture shall be done or made annually 
upon every mining location for purposes 
of benefiting and developing the claim, 
and further provides that upon failm^e to 
do such " assessment work " the ground 
shall become open and relocatable on the 
1st of January following. Hence many 
individuals single out what they believe 
205 



THE LAND OF NOME 

to be valuable property, and acutely in- 
vestigate the validity of its holder's title, 
nosing about the ground or searching 
through the records to ascertain, first, 
whether the work has been done ; second, 
whether an affidavit of labor has been re- 
corded; and, third, if the facts render 
such an affidavit of no effect (save only 
SiS prima facie evidence) and subject the 
affiant to a charge of perjury. 

The legal requirements had not been 
fulfilled regarding the property in ques- 
tion; and on December 31, 1899, Ripley 
and Welch (before mentioned) set out 
from Council, over the snow, for Crooked 
Creek, fifteen miles away. Before start- 
ing, they took the precaution to set their 
watches by the recorder's chronometer, for 
timepieces are very contradictory in Alas- 
ka, and it frequently happens that a num- 
206 



JOE KIPLEY AND OTHERS 

ber of relocators assemble at the same spot, 
watches in hand, near midnight of a De- 
cember 31, prepared to drive down their 
stakes at the first moment of the new year, 
and of course it becomes a nice question 
of evidence as to who has the right time. 
The case in point certainly had not been 
lacking in dramatic incident. Welch and 
Ripley found others on the ground for 
whom no love was lost. It was not a 
trysting-place. Some underhand work 
was done, and Ripley, so he said, re- 
strained old Tom from putting a bullet 
into a certain miscreant. But it was hard 
work to confine the enthusiastic Ripley 
to the material matters, and I had fre- 
quently to nail him down and shut him 
up until I wrote out a portion of the state- 
ment desired. He was acting it through, 
walking up and down, gesticulating, and, 
207 



THE LAND OF NOME 

occasionally, falling into the native dia- 
lect. His favorite mode of brushing aside 
a suggestion — treating it as immaterial 
— was to exclaim : " That 's all right, 
but it don't buy whisky"; and now and 
then he would suddenly turn upon the 
third man with the question, "Ain't she 
pretty?" — referring to his Pocahontas. 
Now, of all the hideously ugly creatures 
rated as human beings, the full-blooded 
Eskimo woman is easily the prize-winner, 
and Mrs. Ripley, besides, was notori- 
ously unattractive even in her own class. 
It was , therefore, a very embarrassing 
question. My sense of professional dig- 
nity was continually outraged, but, in the 
end, I got a satisfactory affidavit, though 
it required nearly four hours to round it 
up. In vino Veritas, Exit Ripley. 
A word as to the natives of northwest- 
208 



JOE RIPLEY AND OTHERS 

ern Alaska. I presume they as nearly 
approach living in a state of nature as 
any beings on the face of the earth. Of 
undoubted Mongolian origin, their an- 
cestors drifted over from Siberia to an 
equally hard country where the sole oc- 
cupation of their descendants is a hand- 
to-mouth struggle for existence, in ob- 
taining for daily subsistence the scant 
provender which nature supplies ready- 
made. It is a matter simply of catching 
fish in their nets during the summer, and 
in winter trapping the ptarmigan or wild 
grouse and hunting the walrus and the 
seal. Their boats, or " kyaks," made 
from walrus-hide and repaired with ivory, 
are very ingeniously contrived and clev- 
erly managed. They are naturally a 
very peaceful people, except when, in vio- 
lation of the law, the white man sells 
209 



THE LAND OF NOME 

them whisky. They are godless and 
have no religion whatever, nor any form 
of worship, nor any imagery, nor any idea 
of a happy hunting-ground hereafter. 
They bury their dead in airy wooden 
biers several feet above the ground, to- 
gether with pots and pans, food, guns 
and ammunition, their theory being that 
the deceased has lain down for a long 
sleep. Perhaps he may wake up some- 
time, and then he will need the means to 
procure and prepare food; and from his 
position he can see his family and friends 
when they come by, and note their pros- 
perity as represented by the number of 
children and dogs. As a race, they are 
few and scattered, without attempt to 
live in tribal relation. The epidemics 
among them in 1900 of pneumonia and 
measles carried away perhaps half their 
210 



JOE KIPLEY AND OTHERS 

number, and it is safe to predict that 
within a short period this hapless race 
will become extinct. 

Later in July there came a welcome 
spell of hot weather, which melted the 
remaining snow upon the slopes and 
helped matters generally, giving one an 
opportunity, among other things, to sun 
his blankets. It not only did great work 
in thawing the ground, but it magnifi- 
cently and quite unnecessarily thawed 
out the mosquitos. The latter, however, 
though bothersome at times and in places, 
were not very annoying. This hot wave, 
which practically prevented traveling 
during the middle of the day, gave way 
to cooler, overcast weather, which now 
and then furnished a series of rainy, dis- 
agreeable days, broken, perhaps, by one 
or two hopefully clear and beautiful. It 
211 



THE LAISTD OF NOME 

is the most fickle climate in the world, 
and will frequently, within a few hours, 
fancifully exhibit all its contrary elements 
of rain and sunshine, wind and chill. 
But, rain or shine, day and night, mining 
operations progress, and the fine treasure 
in the earth is laboriously brought to 
light. 

It frequently became necessary for one 
of us to journey through the now more 
sparse timber, up the slaty, moss-covered, 
mountainous "divide," and over to the 
claims on the fast-becoming-famous Ophir 
Creek. In the absence of rain, and with 
the encouragement of the wind or a little 
sunshine, the ground, up to a certain point, 
dries remarkably soon, and furnishes fairly 
good footing. If the day be pleasant, the 
cheerful chirp of the inevitable song- 
sparrow and the song of the wild canary 
212 



JOE RIPLEY AND OTHERS 

are heard; a thi'ush or robin, surprised 
and alarmed, starts from the brush; 
swallows and snow-white gulls from the 
sea circle over and about the streams; 
and odd, unfamiliar little birds hop about 
in the willow^s. How they get there, the 
Lord only knows. Beautiful — the dain- 
tiest — wild flowers in great variety also 
do their part to make a desolate country 
lovely. Truly, it is a wonderful land of 
contradictions. Looking down from the 
" divide " to the basin below, Ophir Creek, 
almost a river, is now dotted with per- 
manent camps along its lengthy, sinuous 
course; the little log-cabin settlements, 
whose lumber has been brought there at 
great labor and expense, representing the 
larger operators or the companies. 

Of course, Frank Shaw was still in 
charge of the Wild Goose Company's 
213 



THE LAKD OF NOME 

interests on claim ISTo. 15 Ophii'; and he 
had under him about a hundred good 
men, opening up the claim, shoveling 
the pay dirt into five strings of sluice- 
boxes, and some of them, teamsters, car- 
penters, etc., daily bringing supplies from 
Council over the primitive roads, or doing 
other necessary work about the camp. A 
very remarkable young man is Shaw, and 
a very fine fellow. Born and bred, so to 
speak, in the mines of California and 
Ai'izona, and having a genius for the 
work, he was naturally a "born miner," 
and, though only twenty-three years of 
age, was generally acknowledged to be 
the best in the Council City country. In 
a comparatively recent explosion in a 
quartz-mine, Shaw had been almost blown 
to pieces; and although he still carried in 
his face and body bits of the rock, and 
214 



JOE EIPLEY AND OTHERS 

could see only through powerful glasses, 
he was, nevertheless, noted for his ener- 
getic zeal and indefatigable labor. The 
qualities which go to make a good miner 
are, perhaps, generally underestimated. 
He must, primarily, be a man of intelli- 
gence. He must have the eye of an en- 
gineer for turning a creek, constructing 
ditches, building dams, and meeting the 
exigencies of the situation. He must 
know formation, — understand geology, — 
in order to locate the pay streak and oper- 
ate it successfully. And he must know 
how to manage men. These qualities 
Shaw combined. For instance : The labor 
is divided into two ten-hour shifts, the 
day shift and the night shift, and not in- 
frequently hardy men either have not the 
physique to endure the exhausting labor 
of pick and shovel or they "soldier" in 
215 



THE LAND OF NOME 

their work. Men discharged for either 
of these reasons usually came to Shaw 
and, shaking his hand, acknowledged the 
corn, and asked him to look them up if 
he ever came to Montana, or wherever 
they lived. 

I noted some familiar faces in the 
pits, among them those of the lusty 
men on the St Paul with the uncon- 
genial room-mate. On the steamer they 
had shown me with pride a skiff- shaped 
boat which they had had built in San 
Francisco especially for the Fish and 
Neukluk rivers ; and I did n't then have 
the heart to tell them that they could not 
have obtained a boat more ill adapted to 
their purposes. They arrived at Council 
worn out, disgusted, and with only half 
the load with which they had started. 
And, having been told that their claim, 
216 



JOE RIPLEY AND OTHERS 

ten miles above, was glaciered, without 
further ado or any idea of investigating 
it themselves, they sold out their remain- 
ing outfit, and went to work on " 15 " for 
wages. In this they showed much more 
stuff than the fellows who " lie down " 
immediately; and, having enough to get 
out on, go home and tell their friends 
that the country is a " fake." Many of 
these latter are the men who, on the way 
up, have fiercely declaimed to admiring 
audiences: "By God, sir, if I find any 
jumper on my claim, I 've a six-shooter," 
etc. One of these brave boys, whom 
the ladies of the St Paul had greatly 
admired, did find an interloper diligently 
working his Ophir Creek claim, whereupon 
he proceeded to auction off his plant and 
sneak out of town without so much as 
making me a social call. 
217 



THE LAND OF NOME 

They were cleaning up one string of 
sluice-boxes the first time I went to 
" 15 " ; the water-gate in the ditch, into 
which a portion of the creek had been 
diverted, allowed only a gentle stream to 
flow through the huge boa-constrictor 
hose into the boxes and down over the 
riffles where the bronze-colored gold 
shone forth distinctly. The work of the 
day shift had ceased; the men were at 
dinner; and Shaw and one of the shift 
bosses were carefully sweeping the result 
of a day's " run " into a gold-pan. This 
finished, I accompanied him and his bur- 
den to the little cabin which he and the 
bookkeeper occupied; and there found 
Billy "West, looking sturdier after his 
winter sojourn in Alaska, and engaged in 
" blowing out " a pan of gold-dust — that 
is, eliminating the fine black sand. In 

218 



JOE RIPLEY AND OTHERS 

reply to my query, he said that they tried 
to average five thousand dollars every 
twenty-four hours. 

Old Jim, the excellent darky cook, 
gave me a cordial reception, which was 
even more effusive when I gave him a 
cigar. He chuckled when I asked him if 
he missed Mr. Sunnyside, his assistant of 
last season. I think that the way Jim 
expressed his feelings toward Sunnyside 
is worth recording. Sunnyside was a big, 
strapping Calif orni an who had come up 
on the Lane the year before, by profession 
a lawyer, and doubtless regarded by the 
fond inhabitants of his native town as a 
future Daniel Webster. He aired a deep 
bass voice on the ship, and presented a 
very noble and manly figure as he held 
up his end of the quartet. As already 
observed, on the arrival of the fortune- 
219 



THE LAND OF NOME 

hunters at Nome in 1900 there were no 
loose nuggets lying about waiting to be 
picked up, and, consequently, many of 
the confident newcomers were obliged to 
"come right down to hard-pan." And 
so it happened that Sunny side abandoned 
the idea of practising law, and, later in 
the season, found himself assistant-gen- 
eral-utility man to old Jim at 15 Ophir. 
He soon developed into probably the 
most mournful, cheerless, pessimistic in- 
dividual in the country, and gave vent to 
his feelings accordingly. The country 
was " God-forsaken " (as indeed it is) ; 
he suffered from several complaints on 
account of the miserable climate and the 
lack of a feather bed; and the days until 
his escape in the autumn seemed each one 
of a year's duration. One day, at dinner- 
time, when Sunnyside had sounded some 
220 



JOE EIPLEY AND OTHEKS 

dismal note, old Jim, good-naturedly 
enough, turned to him, and said: "Mr. 
Sunnyside, my feelings to'a'd you am very 
well expressed by the eoPed gen'leman 
who was divo'ced from his wife. Says 
he, ' Em'line, if I nebber see you again 
dat won't be any too soon? " A roar of 
delighted appreciation went up from the 
double row of tables. 

The roughing and hardships of the 
California forty-niners, who, bountifully 
supplied by nature on all sides, needed 
no cover at night other than the canopy 
of heaven, and who could work twelve 
months in the year, seem trifling compared 
with the conditions which the Alaska 
pioneers have confronted in a land dis- 
consolately barren and inhospitable, that 
metes out a meager four-months season 
for their labor. To borrow again from 
221 



THE LAISTD OF KOME 

Dunham, here were globe-travelers, men 
who had "panned from Peru to Point 
Ban-ow," now in August "cross-cutting 
a cussed cold creek," who would say, 
"There's no use telling the people at 
home about this country; they'd think 
you were lying." And so, in fact, it is 
a very difficult thing to undertake to do; 
for the reader or listener has really no- 
thing relative to go by, and, of course, 
atmosphere is essential to an adequate 
appreciation and understanding. 

The ultimate yield of the "gold of 
Ophir" Creek will be enormous and as- 
tonishing, justifying its right to a name 
famous from ancient times. But, as is 
generally true of northwestern Alaska, 
the claims in order to pay well must be 
(and they will be) owned and worked 
by large companies, able to incur a con- 
222 



JOE EIPLEY AND OTHERS 

siderable preliminary expense to mine 
them properly and on a large scale. 
ISTow and then the individual will find a 
rich spot from which he and his partners 
may realize a few thousand dollars; but 
the palmy days of the Nome beach and 
the Topkok diggings are seemingly over, 
and, as most of the miners say, it is not a 
" poor man's country." And yet, as re- 
gards its wealth, hardly the surface has 
been scratched. Dredging companies 
have been formed to operate the gravel 
bars and the gold deposits in the beds of 
the streams; and there is excellent rea- 
son for believing that fortunes will be 
made in this way. An excellent indica- 
tion of the stability and extent of the 
Council City District is the fact that the 
common currency is gold-dust. Every 
store and office has its gold- scales, and 
223 



THE LAND OF NOME 

one must, for his own protection, be 
skilled in manipulating the delicate bal- 
ances. Although an ounce of "clean" 
gold will average at the assayer's from 
eighteen to nineteen dollars, sixteen dol- 
lars is, in Alaska, the accepted current 
value. With this, therefore, as a stan- 
dard, — a pennyweight being eighty cents 
and a grain three and a third cents, — 
with accurate scales and proper weights, 
exchange is not a difficult matter. 

Alaska has furnished a fertile field for 
unscrupulous schemers to enrich them- 
selves at the expense of credulous in- 
vestors. Hundreds of claims, which 
either did not exist or were not worth 
the paper upon which they were pre- 
sented, have been sold to the gullible 
public, and corporations have been formed 
to make their stockholders quickly mil- 
224 



JOE EIPLEY AND OTHEKS 

lionaires. Such a proposed donor of 
wealth was "The Polar Bear Mming 
Company," whose prospectus I had read 
and whose operations near Council were 
within my ken. This bonanza concern 
had a capital stock of one million shares, 
offered for sale at four cents a share, 
and its assets consisted of forty-seven 
wildcat clauns upon which the prospectus 
dwelt at length in golden praise, declar- 
ing that " pay streaks " and " old chan- 
nels" pervaded the entire bunch. " Alaska 
has made many millionaires — why not 
be one?" was the tenor of this master- 
piece of seductive argument. After the 
season was well under way, the Polar 
Bear began to tear open the ground not 
far from Council; and soon afterward a 
party of some six or seven discouraged, 
disgusted, and disgruntled men trudged 
225 



THE LAND OF NOME 

laboriously over the tundra, and camped 
near us, until they should learn from 
headquarters at Nome which other one 
of the forty-seven clamis should similarly 
be drained of its treasure. But no word 
came, and there they remained abjectly 
despondent as the dreary days dragged 
by. One evening my partner and I 
strolled over to where they were gath- 
ered in dismal silence about a small fire, 
engaged in brushing away the mosqui- 
tos, and looking generally miserable. 
They appeared to be farmers masquerad- 
ing as miners. There had been defec- 
tion in the camp, due to a controversy as 
to who was the " captain," and in conse- 
quence the circle was depleted. Speak- 
ing of this lamentable fact, one of them, 
who resembled a shoemaker out of em- 
ployment, said apologetically (but he was 
226 



JOE EIPLEY AND OTHERS 

proud of it) : " Now, I don't want to 
seem to be stuck up or conceited, but Pm 
the boss here — I 'm the secretary of the 
company." "How much did it cost 
you? " we queried. " Well," he said, " I 
did n't pay anything to be secretary, but 
I put twenty-one hundred dollars in the 
company." At this of course we roared, 
and soon had the outfit, despite their 
misery, laughing themselves while we 
recited choice bits from the glowing pros- 
pectus. Before departing, the "secre- 
tary" earnestly besought us not to tell 
anybody about his investment, and resign- 
edly admitted that the laugh was on him. 
Later, in August and during the first 
part of September, the nights were clear 
and bright and cold. A beautiful full 
moon, dominant in the brilliant starry 
heavens, ahnost made day of night, and 
227 



THE LAND OF NOME 

added luster and weird charm to the pic- 
turesque meanderings of the river. The 
north star was viewed at closer range, and 
shone sparkling more nearly overhead. 
Icicles, as long as one's arm, formed in 
stalactite fashion, hung from the sluice- 
boxes in the small hours of the morning ; 
but, nevertheless, aided by the light of 
lanterns, the work of mining went on as 
regularly as clockwork. The days were 
mild and sunny, — like October in ^New 
England, — and there was promise of a 
late working autumn, though the wild 
geese and sand-hill cranes with hoarse 
cry were flying southward. 

One fine Sunday morning I said fare- 
well to my friends at Council, several of 
whom requested me to think of them 
when I was "dining at the Waldorf"; 
and as my partner had decided again to 
228 



JOE RIPLEY AND OTHERS 

winter it through and hold things down, 
I left behind me a courageous, cultured, 
and able gentleman, whose good judg- 
ment and varied mental attainments the 
community, appreciative as heretofore, 
would enjoy throughout the white silence. 



229 




IX 

THE OPERETTA AT i)EXTER'S- 
NOME CITY OF TO-DAY 

'ARRIED down the rivers to 
White Mountain with Tom 
Muckle, the freighter, the 
horse having a free ride and 
nibbling at the brush when the eddies 
drew the scow to the banks, I spent the 
night at that intermediate point; and, in 
the morning, in a " coal-oil Johnny," 
proceeded on my way to Golovin Bay. 
This last-named means of transportation 
was a very ridiculous affair, but was 
strictly a "get-there" contrivance. It 
was a narrow skiff, about twenty feet 
230 



THE OPEEETTA AT DEXTER'S 

long, into which an antiquated gasolene- 
engine had been placed, which caused the 
little pair of patched-up paddle-wheels to 
beat the water with a great deal of vehe- 
mence and send the open skimming-dish 
over the water at a delightfully progres- 
sive rate of speed. The captain, engineer, 
and crew consisted of a grizzled anatomy 
bearing the densest growth of underbrush 
in the way of beard, whiskers, and general 
facial hirsuteness that the writer has 
ever gazed upon. It had the nose of a 
human being, which bore the signs of 
conflict with the elements, and brilliantly 
registered a long course of fiery internal 
applications. But he was a nice old fel- 
low, who wanted to get back to his home 
in southeastern Alaska, and envied me 
my departure. Arrived at Chenik, I put 
up at Dexter's Hotel, a pretentious and 
231 



THE LAND OF NOME 

comfortable structure recently erected by 
that pioneer of northwestern Alaska. 

At dinner, doubtless in order to make 
me feel "at home," I was engaged in 
conversation by a stout female person 
rather pretentiously attired, who proved 
to be the housekeeper of the hotel. At 
least forty-five summers had added suc- 
cessive weight to her proportions, and 
the only delicate thing about her was 
her sensibility — and this I knew because, 
in effect, she told me so. It was so try- 
ing for a woman to be alone in Alaska, 
and how astonished her people at home 
would be to see what she had to put up 
with — one who had been reared, so to 
speak, in the lap of luxury. It made her 
homesick to hear that I was heading for 
New York, whose gay metropolitan life, 
I somehow felt I was to infer, she had en- 
232 



THE OPERETTA AT DEXTER'S 

joyed in days gone by. This engaging 
creature, in a softly modulated voice, 
quite impressively selected her words, — 
the longer the better, — and the fact that 
they were not always appropriate to the 
thought was absolutely immaterial so long 
as the sentences were rounded and so- 
norous. For instance, in speaking of the 
ability of the commissioner at Chenik, 
judging from her association with lawyers 
(and she had always known the very best), 
she hardly believed that he possessed a 
" judiciary " mind. In reply to her leads, 
I said that I had just come from Council, 
and that I was an attorney ; but, in answer 
to her query whether I had made my 
" stake," with great discretion I forbore 
to boast of the fortune secreted about my 
person, remarking that in Alaska one 
employed his profession as an opening- 
233 



THE LAND OF KOME 

wedge for mining interests, and that as 
yet my mines were in a state of develop- 
ment. This eheited the information that 
she felt similarly as to her profession; and 
when I made bold to inquire what that 
profession might be, I was slightly stag- 
gered by the rejoinder, " The operetta." 
Now, if she had said opera, it wouldn't 
have been so bad, for one associates with 
the opera something grand, massive, and 
substantial; but she didn't fit in with 
" operetta " at all. It was a rude shock, 
later in the evening, when I saw " Little 
Casino" standing by the bar and drink- 
ing her whisky straight. Then I felt 
sure that the dear ones at home would 
have been sorrowfully, painfully aston- 
ished thus to see their little one, whom, 
perhaps, they fondly imagined soften- 
ing and delighting with song and merri- 
234 



THE OPEEETTA AT DEXTER'S 

ment the rugged natures of the rough 
miners. 

It would have been asking too much of 
Alaskan weather to be allowed to journey 
on as far as Nome without some setback. 
This was soon apparent when a storm of 
wind and rain came up which held me at 
Chenik for three long and dismal days. 
It blew as it can blow only in Alaska. 
The wind literally drove nearly all the 
water out of the shallow bay, so that one 
morning the unusual sight of a beach and 
bar extending almost across to the other 
side presented itself. I very vividly 
recall one evening at that forlorn place, 
when the renowned Dexter himself and a 
crowd of satellites and bar-room loafers 
were gathered about the table playing a 
game of "freeze-out" poker. Business 
was slack, and the urbane bartender, 
235 



THE LAND OF NOME 

whom the favored addressed as " Eddie,'' 
and who, arrayed in a pink-and-white 
sweater, was wont to flourish behind the 
bar, admiring himself in the glass and 
brushing his slick hair between drinks, was 
one of the select party. It was a terrible 
night outside. The men, now and then 
during a pause, would voluntarily remark, 
or interrogate one another, as to where 
they'd like to be, — in what city, restau- 
rant, or theater, — or (one fellow in partic- 
ular, and for my special benefit) would 
predict that the storm was likely to con- 
tinue for a week or more. The howl of the 
wind, which the Malemute dogs tried to 
rival, suddenly found another competitor, 
which, dirge-like, a whooping sort of wail, 
accompanied by the moans and groans of 
a pedal organ in agony, was traced to the 
story above. It was the "operetta" in 
236 



KOME CITY OF TO-DAY 

action — perhaps thinking of home. At 
any rate, she felt badly; and the crowd 
showed its sympathy by a raising of 
voices and yowling like the dogs outside, 
and wondering what she had eaten for 
dinner to cause such evidences of pain 
and suffering. 

On the JElmore^ which still had a mo- 
nopoly of the traffic, I reached Nome at 
last, and repaired to the Golden Gate 
Hotel, which, razed to the ground by 
fire during the winter, had risen phoenix- 
like from the ashes, a credit in structure 
and appointment to almost any commu- 
nity. With its boarded streets, excellent 
water-supply, cold-storage plants, fire- 
engine department, long-distance tele- 
phones, railroad to the Anvil Creek 
mines, and projected electric-light sys- 
tem, Nome has indeed become a city. As 
237 



THE LAND OF NOME 

a matter of fact, the social atmosphere of 
iSTome now demands a white collar and a 
shoe- shine. Wonderful when one thinks 
of its geographical situation, almost in 
the Bering Strait, three thousand miles 
from any port of supply, scarcely one hun- 
dred and fifty from Siberia, in a cheer- 
less, Arctic country, barren of everything 
save gold! When the telegraph line 
from the Klondike to St. Michaels is fin- 
ished, the cable, which has already been 
laid, will carry it through the remaining 
one hundred and fifty miles, and ^^Tome 
will then daily, in all seasons, be in touch 
with the outside world. 

I met Captain Baldwin, a prominent 
and useful citizen, who was selecting 
characteristic photographs to put in an' 
album, as a gift to President McKinley 
from the citizens of Nome. And this 
238 



NOME CITY OF TO-DAY 

was on the day of the President's death. 
The terrible news of the assassination I 
did not learn until I reached Port Town- 
send, in Puget Sound, September 26, 
when the hollow shout of the news-ven- 
der, " McKinley dead and buried," con- 
siderably lessened the pleasure of home- 
coming. The mayor of Nome had 
recently made a trip to Canton in ad- 
vocacy of the removal of Judge ISToyes, 
and the President's questions as to how 
the people of the I^ome region lived had 
suggested the appropriateness of the in- 
tended gift. 

The mines near Nome had been and 
were " showing up " well. Old channels 
were being discovered, and it was gen- 
erally admitted that more gold was in 
sight than ever before. There had re- 
cently been found on Anvil Creek the 
239 



THE LAND OF :NrOME 

largest nugget which Alaska had yet 
produced. This was on exhibition; and 
I elbowed my way through the camera 
fiends to heft the boulder-like mass, 
which weighed ninety-seven ounces, or a 
little over eight pounds (troy), and was 
worth $1552. I have been informed that 
another nugget, slightly larger, was dis- 
covered in the same vicinity soon after- 
ward. It is not improbable that, when 
the creeks shall have been worked out 
by the present methods of sluicing, quite 
as much additional wealth will be accu- 
mulated from the debris by hydraulic 
operations. The great richness of the 
country lies in the "benches," — creek 
flats and hillsides, — and to operate them 
successfully great ditches are being con- 
structed. For instance, on Ophir Creek 
the Wild Goose Company now has under 
240 



NOME CITY OF TO-DAY 

way a ditch, paralleling the creek, twelve 
miles long and twelve feet wide, which 
eventually will extend twelve miles fur- 
ther, to the mouth of the stream. It was 
surprising to see a number of engines 
and plants of various kinds operating the 
beach, which gave the He to the general 
belief that the sands had been wholly 
exhausted. Despite the severe handicap 
of a late spring, the mining season aver- 
aged well, and the output of the yellow 
metal probably equaled that of the year 
previous. The reports concerning the 
new Kougarok and Bluestone districts, 
which had been heralded as "wonders" 
and attracted thousands, of course proved 
to be exaggerated, and caused great dis- 
appointment, although they are known to 
contain a few rich creeks and may some 
day be worked on a large scale. 
241 



THE LAND OF NOME 

I ran across several of the "nobility" 
and also the "Divine Healer." The 
former appeared less chipper, and the 
latter looked less benign. Their large 
interests were centered in the mining 
districts aforesaid. The " Cafe de Paris," 
enlarged and refitted, would grace any 
metropolis. Its cuisine and service were 
excellent, and it was furnished with all 
the up-to-date conveniences and appur- 
tenances, including, as heretofore, a count. 
Among the features of ISTome are the li- 
censed town-criers, who parade the main 
street from early morn till late at night, 
calling out and advertising with original 
variations the various restaurants, enter- 
tainments, and sailings of steamers, for 
which services they are very well paid. 
At this time there were two steamers in 
the roadstead, and tickets to Seattle were 
242 



NOME CITY OF TO-DAY 

selling like hot cakes. The crier for one 
of these vessels — a young, clean-cut- 
looking fellow, evidently well educated, 
and possessed of a sense of humor and a 
splendid voice — was creating a good 
deal of amusement by his form of appeal. 
After extolling the magnificence and 
speed of the ship, with solemn mien and 
clear, resonant tenor voice he called out 
in the crowded thoroughfare : " Get your 
tickets back to mother and the old farm, 
you hungry, homesick placer-miners." 
This latter mode of address was of 
course highly flattering to the host of 
bar-room loafers. 

The Cape ^ome excitement has yielded 
an abundant harvest to the transporta- 
tion companies; and, in the main, the 
treatment which they have accorded their 
passengers has been outrageous — in some 
243 



THE -LAND OF I^OME 

instances even piratical. This I know 
not only from accounts of trustworthy 
persons, but also from my own observa- 
tion. Vessels have been making the 
long and hazardous trip which should be 
condemned equally with their owners. 
Narrow escapes from complete disaster 
have not been infrequent, and persons 
who in good faith have bought first-class 
accommodations have gone aboard to 
find that they have been second pur- 
chasers, and, in overcrowded ships, have 
been obliged to resort to the floor for 
sleep, and to bribery of the stewards for 
decent food. Many a chapter of horrors 
incredible could be detailed by unfortu- 
nate participants in the ISTome travel. It 
was with astonishment and genuine re- 
gret that I read in a recent Nome paper 
of the suicide of my cabin-mate on the 
244 



KOME CITY OF TO-DAY 

SL Paulj the pleasant Knight of the 
Green Table. Despondent, he had de- 
liberately shot himself through the head. 
He was a general favorite, " square " in 
his "profession," and his untimely end 
was widely regretted. 



245 




THE END OF THE CONSPIRACY- 
A WORD FOR ALASKA 

|FTER having served only 
three months of his year's 
sentence, on the plea of ill 
health and through strong 
pohtical influence, Alexander McKenzie 
had been pardoned by the President, and 
was again free to descend, if he chose, 
upon the mining fraternity of Cape Nome. 
But he showed excellent judgment in 
returning to his Dakota constituency. 
The Court of Appeals, in its opinion in 
the McKenzie contempt cases, had in effect 
declared that an outraged community had 
246 



THE END OF THE CONSPIRACY 

patiently endured injuries unparalleled in 
the history of American jurisprudence, 
and that the people were entitled to high 
praise for their abstinence from forcible 
resistance. Apropos of this, the then 
senior senator from South Dakota, in his 
defense in the Senate of McKenzie and 
N^oyes, had engaged the attention of that 
body in a tirade against the honorable 
court. During the winter, people had 
been brooding over their grievances, and 
when spring came there was frequent 
mention of " necktie " parties and " shot- 
gun" excursions, in a w^ay that carried 
conviction of settled purposes. As a 
further inducement to Mr. McKenzie to 
seek other spheres of activity and useful- 
ness, the Circuit Court of Appeals had 
made orders, and appointed an officer to 
serve them, requiring Judge Noyes, Mr. 
247 



THE LAND OF NOME 

Wood, the district attorney, Mr. Geary, 
the lawyer and ex-Congressman who had 
advised and defended McKenzie, and one 
Frost, a special agent from the Depart- 
ment of Justice at Washington, to appear 
in San Francisco in October, 1901, and 
show cause why they, too, should not be 
punished for contempt of court. After 
all, there was something to be admired in 
the bold dash and forceful ability of the 
arch conspirator. Alexander McKenzie 
might have reigned supreme until the 
successful realization of the scheme or 
conspiracy had he been assisted by a more 
efficient and less bungling corps of lieu- 
tenants. 

Judge !N"oyes, having given a scant 

day's notice to the bar, departed from 

]S'ome in August, 1901, adjourning his 

court until November, and leaving legal 

248 



THE END OF THE CONSPIRACY 

matters in a state of great confusion. 
The favored, however, immediately prior 
to his departure, had obtained his ready 
signature to various orders and injunc- 
tions; and shortly before the vessel 
weighed anchor there was a stream of 
small boats plying between the shore and 
the maritime court, whose passengers 
were obtaining what came to be known 
as " deep-sea injunctions." As a result 
of a number of conflicting orders which 
Judge Noyes had made pertaining to a 
certain disputed mining claim, a body of 
masked men some time later endeavored 
by force of arms to di^ive away the parties 
in possession, in consequence of which 
there was bloodshed and enrichment of 
the hospital. 

Two petitions — one from the general 
public, the other from the lawyers — 
249 



THE LAND OF NOME 

were sent to the President seeking the 
removal of Judge Noyes and the appoint- 
ment of a suitable man in his stead. The 
latter petition, signed almost universally 
by the bar, characterizes Judge Noyes as 
"weak," "vacillating," "dilatory," "care- 
less," " negligent," " partial," and " abso- 
lutely incompetent." It should carry 
additional weight by reason of the mod- 
eration of its language. In September, 
having received his instructions through 
Attorney-General Knox, Judge Wicker- 
sham, of the Third Judicial Division of 
Alaska, opened a term of court during 
the interregnum period; and, having en- 
tered upon his duties with ability and 
despatch, soon gained the confidence of 
the community by a number of prompt, 
clear-cut decisions. 

The United States Circuit Court of Ap- 
250 



THE END OF THE CONSPIRACY 

peals, on the sixth day of January, 1902, 
filed its opinion and judgment in the con- 
tempt cases of Arthur H. Noyes, C. A. S. 
Frost, Thomas J. Geary, and Joseph K. 
Wood. The opinion of the court was de- 
livered by Judge Gilbert, and there are 
concurring opinions by Judges Ross and 
Morrow, which, however, are stronger 
and more severe in their expressions than 
the prevailing opinion. 

After reviewing the history of the pro- 
ceedings which have heretofore been set 
forth, and commenting upon the further 
evidence received on the trial. Judge 
Noyes is adjudged guilty of contempt of 
court in that he not only refused to com- 
pel McKenzie to obey the writs, but, on 
the other hand, made orders which pre- 
vented their enforcement. In view of 
the fact that he holds a public office, 
251 



THE LAND OF NOME 

Noyes's sentence consists of a mere fine 
of one thousand dollars. As to Geary, 
the lawyer, the court states that there is 
not sufficient evidence to convince it be- 
yond a reasonable doubt that he was 
guilty of contempt, and the charge against 
him is dismissed. Wood, the district 
attorney, is adjudged guilty, and is sen- 
tenced to four months' imprisonment in 
the county jail of Alameda County, Cali- 
fornia. Frost, the special agent from the 
Department of Justice, who (as the evi- 
dence discloses), soon after his arrival at 
ISTome, became an assistant district attor- 
ney, and, later. Judge Noyes's private 
secretary, and who spent government 
money in behalf of the conspirators, is 
likewise found guilty of contempt of 
court, and is sentenced to imprisonment 
for twelve months in the county jail. 
252 



THE END OF THE CONSPIEACY 

Judge Eoss in his concurring opinion 
says: 

"I am of the opinion that the records 
and evidence in the cases show beyond 
any reasonable doubt that the circum- 
stances under which and the purposes for 
wliich each of those persons committed 
the contempt alleged and so found were 
far graver than is indicated in the opinion 
of the court, and that the punishment 
awarded by the court is wholly inade- 
quate to the gravity of the offenses. I 
think the records and evidence show 
very clearly that the contempts of Judge 
I^oyes and Frost were committed in pur- 
suance of a corrupt conspiracy with Alex- 
ander McKenzie and with others, not 
before the court and therefore not neces- 
sary to be named, by which the properties 
involved in the suits mentioned in the 
253 



THE LAND OF NOME 

opinion, among other properties, were to 
be wrongfully taken, under the forms of 
law, from the possession of those engaged 
in mining them, and the proceeds thereof 
appropriated by the conspirators. For 
those shocking offenses it is apparent 
that no punishment that can be lawfully 
imposed in a contempt proceeding is ade- 
quate. But a reasonable imprisonment 
may be here imposed, and I am of the 
opinion that, in the case of the respondent 
Arthur H. l^oyes, a judgment of impris- 
onment in a county jail for the period of 
eighteen months should be imposed, and 
in the case of Frost a like imprisonment 
of fifteen months. ... I think "Wood 
should be imprisoned for ten months. . . . 
In regard to the respondent Geary, I 
agree with the finding of the court to the 
effect that the contempt alleged against 
him is not sufficiently established." 
254 



THE END OF THE COl^SPIRACY 

Judge Morrow concurs in the findings 
contained in the opinion of Judge Gilbert, 
and adds : " In my judgment the evidence 
establishes the fact that there was a con- 
spiracy between the respondent ^Noyes, 
McKenzie, and others to secure posses- 
sion of certain valuable mining claims at 
Nome, Alaska, under proceedings involv- 
ing the appointment of a receiver, for the 
purpose of working the properties and 
obtaining the gold deposited in the claims. 
To carry these proceedings to a supposed 
successful conclusion, Noyes, McKenzie, 
and others found it a necessary part of 
the scheme to resist the process of this 
court. In pursuance of this conspiracy, 
the contempt charged against ^NToyes was 
committed; but I agree with Judge Gil- 
bert that this conspiracy is outside the 
charge of contempt, and in view of the 
fact that the respondent Noyes holds a 
255 



THE LAND OF NOME 

judicial position, I concur in his judgment 
that the respondent be required to pay a 
fine of one thousand dollars." 

A giant conspiracy indeed, far-reaching 
in its ramifications, which received its 
death-blow in the arrest and sentence of 
Alexander McKenzie, and which may be 
said to have had its proper interment in 
the recent adjudication of the Circuit 
Court of Appeals. It only remains for 
the President to remove from office the 
judge who has so flagrantly disgraced the 
federal bench, and to appoint a successor 
under whose administration of justice a 
marvelous mineral region will develop 
with rapidity and confidence.* 

*As this book is going through the press, the an- 
nouncement is made from Washington, February 23, 
that, upon the recommendation of the Attorney-Gen- 
eral, the President has removed Judge Noyes from 
office. 

256 



THE END OF THE CONSPIRACY 

As this book goes to print, renewed 
efforts are being made in the United 
States Senate, by Messrs- Hansbrough 
and McCumber of ]S"orth Dakota, to " vin- 
dicate " McKenzie and IS'oyes. The pres- 
ent method of vindication appears to con- 
sist mainly in attacking the intelligence 
and integrity of the three eminent jurists 
who constitute the United States Circuit 
Court of Appeals for the Mnth Cu^cuit. 

The credit for relieving northwestern 
Alaska of this judicial-receiver curse be- 
longs to three equally essential factors: 
first, Charles D. Lane, president of the 
"Wild Goose Company, who had the cour- 
age to fight the " ring " to a finish without 
compromise; second, Samuel Knight, of 
the San Francisco bar, through whose 
ability and aggressiveness the matter was 
properly and clearly brought before the 
257 



THE LAND OF NOME 

appellate court; third, the Cn^cuit Court 
of Appeals for the JSTinth Circuit, which 
promptly and fearlessly redressed, so far as 
lay within its power, the wrongs that had 
been perpetrated among an outraged peo- 
ple. And, be the truth known, this has 
been accomplished in the face of great 
indifference and strong opposition at 
Washington. 

Uncle Sam's record in Alaska has not 
been one to be proud of. A taxed, un- 
represented people, who, under the great- 
est adversities, have shown to the world 
the enormous and varied resources of a 
supposedly barren land, have for years had 
to bear the additional burden of incompe- 
tent and unscrupulous officials who have 
been foisted upon the country. The rush 
to Cape Nome has attracted attention to 
only a comparatively insignificant portion 
258 



A WOKD FOR ALASKA 

of Alaska, and emphasized but one of the 
treasures in its vast, unexplored storehouse. 
In the north and east, and over by 
the Canadian border-line, is the world- 
famous Klondike region. Fifteen hun- 
dred miles distant to the west, close to 
Siberia, are the JSTome gold-fields. South- 
east are found seemingly inexhaustible 
quartz-gold mines, the greatest salmon- 
fisheries in the world, and a climate and 
soil which will make agriculture possible 
and profitable. And away to the south and 
west are immense forests, mines of copper, 
and the Pribilof Islands, the home of the 
fur-seal. Within the boundaries of Alaska 
there lies a country incomprehensible in 
its extent and difliculties, inconceivable in 
the possibilities of its latent wealth. The 
marvelous discoveries of gold at Cape 
I^ome, which have entailed so much hard- 
259 



THE LAND OF ISTOME 

ship and scandal, bringing riches to many 
and disappointment to more, will at least 
have worked a highly beneficent result in 
bringing earlier to light the neglect and 
needs of our wonderful Alaska. 



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